Train as Flight Surgeon to become Neurosurgeon?

[LoverOfPie]

I have a plan in my head to serve 1-4 years as a flight surgeon while spending some of my time outside of clinic performing neurosurgery research. My thesis is I can serve the amazing soldiers I will work with and do cool stuff while I am young (jump out of a plane, get waterboarded at SERE school, etc.) while simultaneously building up a more competitive application for NS residency during this time. I already started working on NS research, but the average applicant matching to NS has >18 publications.


TL;DR I am really interested in FS as well as NS, so basically I am trying to have my cake and eat it too. Do you think this is possible?

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[95ragtop]

Where are you at in the pipeline? Are you trying to go civilian or mil for the residency? Depending on which route email some PDs and ask them directly. Aside from the research are the rest of your stats up to snuff for NS?

 

[LoverOfPie]

Where are you at in the pipeline? Are you trying to go civilian or mil for the residency? Depending on which route email some PDs and ask them directly. Aside from the research are the rest of your stats up to snuff for NS?

Hey 95ragtop! Thanks for your advice, I think I will contact some PDs!

I am right at the beginning of the pipe-line, M0. I have already taken my school's first year courses for my master's so this will be my second pass at the material. According to my PD, people who have gone through the master's program tend to "lead the pack" in the MD program stats-wise and I also started maturing Zanki, so I anticipate my pre-clinical years to be relatively easy.

My thought was to try for mil match first, and if that doesn't work I'd enter civ match. If neither are fruitful then I would serve as a FS (which I wanted to do anyway) while continuing NS research on the side to build a more competitive application.

However, I am confused about how payback/time served would work in this scenario. Would it be better to do 1 year FS and go for NS (would my pay-back be 6 years instead of 7)? Or should I complete my pay-back by doing FS for 4 years and then enter NS match?

 

[j4pac]

Hey 95ragtop! Thanks for your advice, I think I will contact some PDs!

I am right at the beginning of the pipe-line, M0. I have already taken my school's first year courses for my master's so this will be my second pass at the material. According to my PD, people who have gone through the master's program tend to "lead the pack" in the MD program stats-wise and I also started maturing Zanki, so I anticipate my pre-clinical years to be relatively easy.

My thought was to try for mil match first, and if that doesn't work I'd enter civ match. If neither are fruitful then I would serve as a FS (which I wanted to do anyway) while continuing NS research on the side to build a more competitive application.

However, I am confused about how payback/time served would work in this scenario. Would it be better to do 1 year FS and go for NS (would my pay-back be 6 years instead of 7)? Or should I complete my pay-back by doing FS for 4 years and then enter NS match?

Financially? It’d best to hit the civilian world ASAP where your income can easily double your military income in NSY.

I think much of it depends on how long you want to do FS. There aren’t a ton of 1-year FS tours. They are usually hardship tours in pretty remote areas. Most FS billets (at least in the Navy but likely other services) are 2-3 years, but you could extend. I personally loved FS. I’d honestly consider doing FS for a lifetime if the pay was there. Enjoy it.

 

[militaryPHYS]

Hey 95ragtop! Thanks for your advice, I think I will contact some PDs!

I am right at the beginning of the pipe-line, M0. I have already taken my school's first year courses for my master's so this will be my second pass at the material. According to my PD, people who have gone through the master's program tend to "lead the pack" in the MD program stats-wise and I also started maturing Zanki, so I anticipate my pre-clinical years to be relatively easy.

My thought was to try for mil match first, and if that doesn't work I'd enter civ match. If neither are fruitful then I would serve as a FS (which I wanted to do anyway) while continuing NS research on the side to build a more competitive application.

However, I am confused about how payback/time served would work in this scenario. Would it be better to do 1 year FS and go for NS (would my pay-back be 6 years instead of 7)? Or should I complete my pay-back by doing FS for 4 years and then enter NS match?

Passions are great but they often change. You haven't even started medical school and you are pipelining yourself in to Neurosurgery. Statistics tell us that you are likely to end up in a different specialty based on how your likes/dislikes change during clinical rotations, score results, life/family changes.

You cannot plan a MilMed career based on neurosurgery. You can't plan it for any specific specialty.

It has to be the right choice for you right now. Imagine you never get to be a neurosurgeon and you end up being a flight surgeon for 4 years before even starting specialty training and then end up wanting to be a pediatric cardiologist. Will you still be happy and honored to have served?

Unfortunately you have to plan for the worst when it comes to MilMed. If you will still be happy serving if the worst happens then it is right for you.

 

[DeadCactus]

It sounds like you plan to work toward an extremely competitive field, give it a shot, and if it falls through you would be happy to just enjoying the adventure of something like a flight surgery tour for a few years before trying again either in the military or as a civilian. I personally think that's the kind of attitude that makes military medicine a reasonable option.

My main warning would be to understand the career impact of being a military neurosurgeon for the pay-back period. There are significant concerns for skill atrophy in any of the procedural fields. Are you willing to deal with that? Are you willing to not even apply neurosurgery until after your payback to avoid it?

 

[LoverOfPie]

It sounds like you plan to work toward an extremely competitive field, give it a shot, and if it falls through you would be happy to just enjoying the adventure of something like a flight surgery tour for a few years before trying again either in the military or as a civilian. I personally think that's the kind of attitude that makes military medicine a reasonable option.

Thanks for getting me DeadCactus :^)

My main warning would be to understand the career impact of being a military neurosurgeon for the pay-back period. There are significant concerns for skill atrophy in any of the procedural fields. Are you willing to deal with that? Are you willing to not even apply neurosurgery until after your payback to avoid it?

I think so. I have no problem delaying training NS until after payback to avoid skill atrophy if it means I'll be able to provide my patients better treatment. Also, another route would be to participate in moonlighting to keep my procedural skill sharp, right?

It has to be the right choice for you right now. Imagine you never get to be a neurosurgeon and you end up being a flight surgeon for 4 years before even starting specialty training and then end up wanting to be a pediatric cardiologist. Will you still be happy and honored to have served?

Yep! Totally understand passions change. This is already my second career (engineering previously) and loved chasing my past passions as much as my new ones. Life's too short to not give all your passions a shot, and the one constant would be that I took good care of my brothers & sisters along the way

Financially? It’d best to hit the civilian world ASAP where your income can easily double your military income in NSY.

I think much of it depends on how long you want to do FS. There aren’t a ton of 1-year FS tours. They are usually hardship tours in pretty remote areas. Most FS billets (at least in the Navy but likely other services) are 2-3 years, but you could extend. I personally loved FS. I’d honestly consider doing FS for a lifetime if the pay was there. Enjoy it.

j4pac Thank you! Recalling your experience with FS just got me so hyped up! I know hitting the civ world ASAP is the best way for me to increase my income and take care of my loved ones (financially). I'm also cognizant of the fact that I might fall in love with FS/MilMed and stay in for life haha. It's okay, I think I'd be happy either way

I do wonder what my payback would look like if I did a 2-3 year FS tour and then applied NS -- would those FS years not count towards payback and I would still owe 6-7 years after NS training? This always confused me

 

[95ragtop]

Sounds like you're off to a good start. I started with zanki and switched to light year. Even though Step 1 won't be scored for you, having a really good base for Step 2 will be key to doing well. If you haven't looked at the stats for NS I suggest doing so. I think it was the zoom meeting below that the Army PD says they want the brightest/best candidate.

I know people match after serving as FS, but it's to less competitive fields. I really recommend connecting to civilian PDs to see their thoughts on this. I also don't recommend putting all your eggs into one basket and making your life's focus NS. I'm just an MS3, but I had an idea of what specialties interested me before I started. I tried my best to keep an open mind during clerkships to see if other specialties interested me. Everything has a trade off and sometimes life's priorities change.

Here's a zoom meeting that was hosted a few weeks ago from Walter Reed NS. Neurosurgery - Google Drive

"My thought was to try for mil match first, and if that doesn't work I'd enter civ match. If neither are fruitful then I would serve as a FS (which I wanted to do anyway) while continuing NS research on the side to build a more competitive application."

I think the Army takes 1 person a year for NS. If that isn't you, then you do an intern year. After that year you can reapply or its off for a FS tour. Unless the Army tells you that they are allowing civilian deferred/sponsored spots, you are not able to do a civilian match.

"However, I am confused about how payback/time served would work in this scenario. Would it be better to do 1 year FS and go for NS (would my pay-back be 6 years instead of 7)? Or should I complete my pay-back by doing FS for 4 years and then enter NS match?"

I'm assuming you're doing a 4 year HPSP plan. Once you are done with medical school you owe the Army 4 years. Intern year is a wash and does not add or subtract from that. Every year of FS you can subtract one of those 4 years. Say you do a 2 year FS tour, so you have 2 years left on you HPSP payback when you get accepted for mil NS. You'll probably have to redo intern year and then do PGY2-7. The HPSP years will count towards residency, but you start building up a new pay back because of the residency. By my fuzzy math, you will owe 6 years once you are done with NS residency.

The timeline would look something like this: intern year, years 2 & 3 FS, years 4-10 NS residency, years 11-16 mil NS attending.

 

[orbitsurgMD]

Hey 95ragtop! Thanks for your advice, I think I will contact some PDs!

I am right at the beginning of the pipe-line, M0. I have already taken my school's first year courses for my master's so this will be my second pass at the material. According to my PD, people who have gone through the master's program tend to "lead the pack" in the MD program stats-wise and I also started maturing Zanki, so I anticipate my pre-clinical years to be relatively easy.

My thought was to try for mil match first, and if that doesn't work I'd enter civ match. If neither are fruitful then I would serve as a FS (which I wanted to do anyway) while continuing NS research on the side to build a more competitive application.

However, I am confused about how payback/time served would work in this scenario. Would it be better to do 1 year FS and go for NS (would my pay-back be 6 years instead of 7)? Or should I complete my pay-back by doing FS for 4 years and then enter NS match?

NS is such a difficult match, it is more than just competitive, there is a difficult to suss additional requirement of politics, connections and luck. Thinking back to my med school class, there were 3 guys I knew who were very interested. I think two of them found a residency, both civilian, one at Mayo, the other at the Cleveland Clinic. The third ended up doing a Ph.D. and going into pathology, IIRC. That doesn't sound like bad odds, but there is an extreme amount of self-selection, and many fearing they won't match well anywhere if they go all-in on neurosurgery and don't match. There are ortho spine docs and interventional neuroradiologists whose practices and referrals look like many neurosurgical practices. So leave yourself some breathing room. Med school is a long enough experience for things to change as interests go.

 

[yogurt480]

Chase the dream whatever it is man! Just remember the NS is very hard to get into if you try for a military residency. The Navy only has one available, for example. You may try to do civilian for your residency.

 

[armytrainingsir]

The reserves are what you are looking for if you want to scratch the .mil itch.

Make being a NS your #1 goal. The .mil will always be there.

 

[LoverOfPie]

The reserves are what you are looking for if you want to scratch the .mil itch.

Make being a NS your #1 goal. The .mil will always be there.

How would this look payback-wise? From what I read, army national guard is an 8-year contract (4yr med school + 2 yrs of residency + 2yrs in IRR counting towards the contract?) if you do not take incentives. Do the reserves carry a similar payback?

WIth a 7 year NS residency, it seems too good to be true that I'd owe nothing to uncle sam by the time I'm done with NS training? Although i guess army wouldn't be paying for anything in this scenario, so I suppose I just answered my own question as to why this is possible

Here's a zoom meeting that was hosted a few weeks ago from Walter Reed NS. Neurosurgery - Google Drive

watched the whole meeting! That was undeniably informative, thank you so much 95ragtop!

 

[armytrainingsir]

While there are a few exceptions, commissioning as an officer carries a 8 year obligation.

Being in the NG or reserves during medical school build time in grade, but little to none of the 'fun' sort of things you want to do. Until you are a licensed physician (post internship), you are pretty much worthless to the .mil.

 

[FlightDocDan]

I have a plan in my head to serve 1-4 years as a flight surgeon while spending some of my time outside of clinic performing neurosurgery research. My thesis is I can serve the amazing soldiers I will work with and do cool stuff while I am young (jump out of a plane, get waterboarded at SERE school, etc.) while simultaneously building up a more competitive application for NS residency during this time. I already started working on NS research, but the average applicant matching to NS has >18 publications.


TL;DR I am really interested in FS as well as NS, so basically I am trying to have my cake and eat it too. Do you think this is possible?

I am assuming you are looking to do FS in the US Army or are you looking at different branches? FS experiences are somewhat different from branch to branch and NS residency availabilities may also be different... doing Navy FS and get out to civilian NS may also be an option to consider.