Recently interviewed at USUHS, was a busy day and didn't quite get all my questions answered. I'm prior service (Albeit national guard) and my contracts up in about 6 months.
I probably saw you there! Hope you get good news.
1) Whats the actual service commitment here? 4 years of schooling and then 7 years service commitment? Or does residency not count towards your service commitment?
To expand on this, residency actually incurs a commitment. But you can serve it concurrently with your USUHS commitment. What this means for most people is that your commitment after you finish residency is 7 years. If you do a GMO, then those years count toward your commitment and things can get a little confusing if you do a GMO or two and then do a long residency. But no, residency does not count toward your commitment. And fellowship does not either, and adds time because you can't serve residency, school, and fellowship ADSO all at once.
2) What military exercises will we have to partake in outside of the schooling? I know we start with officer training school (1 month) and then move into the actual school. We work during the full "summer break" every year? Is there any other excercises we have to do during the year?
There is no full summer break really. We are on a shortened preclerkship curriculum which means the preclerkship period ends December of M2 and we start rotations the next month. So during the "summer" between M1 and M2, you get a 5 week period where you have to do a 2-week summer operation experience and a 1-week combat medicine course. The other 2 weeks you get for yourself and can take leave if you want.
Other than that, it is very non-obtrusive. You do MFP 101 after the first module of school. It's a 10-day FTX where you go be patients for the 4th years doing their final field practicum followed by 5 days of playing soldier (you shoot the M9, do some land nav, combatives, a cool LRC course, etc). It was actually really fun and a good break between modules. During each module there is a day where you do a 3-4 hour lab on a combat medical skill. We did suturing, primary/secondary surveys, and splinting during MSK. During cardio/pulmonary/renal we will do hemorrhage control. It's literally one afternoon a module.
Personally, I think the mandatory stuff that is obtrusive is the stuff they schedule right before finals. We had a 3 hour session on ethics the afternoon before our OSCE and half of it was a small group exercise so you couldn't just anki the whole time. They do stuff like that a lot. It's sort of the only part of the curriculum I don't like so far.
3) Do you feel like the military gets in the way of your education while at USUHS?
Only an MS1, but so far not at all.
4) Any regrets about going to USUHS? What if it's your only acceptance?
I had multiple acceptances and am so glad I chose USUHS. I already had 7 years prior service, so I knew what I was getting into with the military though.
5) Whats the deployment tempo for mil physicians? Lots of TDY?
Depends on your specialty, branch, and what's going on. I won't pretend like I can answer this.
6) Any advice on DD form 368?
I actually didn't need this form, but I did end up getting it filled out anyway. I just filled it out, had my division officer (not sure what you call them in the nat guard, but it's the officer directly in charge of us) route it up to our commanding officer, and then our command master chief sent it over to the personnel office in millington. It was very easy, they just wanted some very specific wording on it for some reason. But it was actually for when I was applying for HPSP. I didn't need to have that form for USUHS. I was on active duty when applying and had no break in service though, so that might be why.
