Hey everyone,
I just had a few questions about USUHS. 1) I have a good idea about the matching process and from what I've heard, the army has a lot of positions open for primary care. Is this correct? Just to know my chances of actually matching into family medicine. 2) When you're a student, I know you can live on your own, but like how does "the AWOL policy" work:? Sorry not familiar with the military terms yet lol. Is there an attendance list or something?. 3) I know you do officer training before you go to the school, but do you start getting paid during that time or does it start when you actually start going to school? 4) What is daily life like as a doctor after USUHS, do you get weekends off? what additional duties do you have that a civilian doctor wouldn't.
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
1. Primary care tends to have a lot of spots. However, there are changes on the horizon. Mil med is switching its focus to operational medicine, and no one really knows what that means for GME. FM is probably going to be one of the specialties that will still have plenty of spots, but it's impossible to say that for sure since no one knows.
Additionally, something like 75-80% of med students change their minds on specialty. If being able to pick any specialty you are interested in is more important than being a military physician, you might want to wait and join during residency or after if you're still interested.
2. lol AWOL is an Army term. In the Navy we say UA. It's all the same. It just means you're not where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there. Lecture is not mandatory at USUHS, so except for the few mandatory things they have during the week, you don't have to be at school if you don't want to be. There is a travel restriction for liberty, meaning that you cannot go farther than 250 miles without putting in for leave. Otherwise, when you're off you are off and can do whatever you want within the limits of the UCMJ and local laws lol. There is an email muster that you must respond to. It goes to your USUHS email, and you just respond to it. It's basically to make sure you're still alive.
3. If you are a new accession, it can take a couple weeks to a month to start getting paid. You should save up some money prior to going to make sure you can afford your uniforms, food, bills, etc. before you start getting paid.
4. Not going to comment on life as an Army doc, as I've never experienced it. If it's anything like the Navy, it's being a doc with a uniform. There are collateral duties and stuff that you should be looking to do if you want to promote past O-4 or O-5, but when you're off you're off. The military isn't like some of the movies where you're always on base and have no life. When you're on liberty, you can go home and do whatever you want. If you pick a specialty or a billet that has a lot of weekend call, then you may be working a lot of weekends. But that's true in the civilian world too.
Things you have to do that civilian doctors don't:
1. PRT (physical readiness test--in the Navy you take this once or twice per year depending on how you do)
2. Online annual trainings (cyber awareness, antiterrorism, etc)
3. Annual sexual assault training
4. Admin stuff--civilians have this too, but in the military you will also be writing fitreps, evals, awards, etc. for the people in your department
5. Collaterals, like safety officer, etc.
That stuff takes up time, but it's not overly burdensome. Just kind of a mild annoyance. (This is IMO and a lot of the Navy docs I've worked with--some people find them to be really annoying, but I think those people would probably be complaining about anything because mil med just doesn't agree with them.)
