Reserves during residency??

[napoleondynamite]

Hello,

I am a 4th year medical student and have matched into the field of radiation oncology. I have always been interested in the military..I nearly signed up for the HPSP program when I was accepted to med school.

I am interested in finding out what options are available for the reserves during residency, but the recruiters I have spoken with have been very unhelpful. They seem to only want to talk to me if I'm interested in active duty (which I am not at this point). I tried calling some of the 1-800 numbers for different branches of the armed services..which was also unhelpful as they only directed me to general reserve recruiters and not recruiters who specifically deal with medical personnell.

If any of you have any helpful info for me, or can tell me where to get it, I would appreciate it. I live in Salt Lake City currently and will be doing my residency in Florida and Philly.

My basic questions are:

1) Can I do the reserves with no active duty committment later?
2) Is there loan repayment for me..if so how much?
3) What is the compensation like?
4) Could joining the reserves endanger my residency in radonc in any way? ie-does my program have to accomodate my decision? (especially if I were to be deployed..I mean, can they replace me?)

Thanks for your help. ND.

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[Tiger26]

Dude, you just got into one of the more competitive and lucrative specialties. You'd probably be better off just leasing your Porsche right now instead of thinking about the reserves. I'm doing it and it's the most a$$-backward organization I've ever seen. Think about it this way--loan repayment value will be cancelled out eventually by the fact that your large civilian salary just got cut in half when you got deployed.