I get bored easily. Being a Navy wife wasn't enough to keep me on my toes, so I decided to go to medical school. Nope, still not enough excitement, I think I'll join the Navy. I'm crazy right? Maybe. Get your popcorn people, this is a long one.As crazy as it sounds, I think I will actually see my husband more by joining the Navy. As a civilian medical student, I would be stuck in one place for 4 years. He never stays put for that long! After finishing medical school as a civilian, I would participate in the match program. I would give a list of preferred specialties and locations that I wanted, and some mysterious algorithm would tell me where to go. Sounds a bit like military life, eh? (Did I just say eh? I must be hanging around too many Canadians). With both of us in the Navy, there is more of a chance that they will try to get us stationed together. The civilian match program cares about the Navy as much as Big Navy cares about the match (hint: not much).
Military medicine is something that has appealed to me for several years. I first learned about it during my sophomore year of college when I decided I wanted to go to medical school and started thinking about how to pay for it. There aren't many scholarships or grants for medical school, but the military will pay for it! Of course there's that little catch that you owe them a few years of your life afterwards. There are two main routes to military medicine. One is called the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP) and the other is Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), an all military medical school in Bethesda, MD.
With HPSP you can go to any medical school in the country, MD or DO, and the military will pay for tuition, and give you a stipend each month to help pay for books and living expenses (around $2K I believe). You owe one year of service for each year of school that they pay for. It's possible to start in the middle of school, but if they were to pay for all 4 years of school, you would owe 4 years of service AFTER residency (another 4 years) - 12 years total!
USUHS is a little bit different. With HPSP you can act like a civilian during medical school with the exception of a few summer trainings here and there. Students at USUHS wear a uniform to class every day, take classes relevant to military medicine, and have training exercises such as a mass casualty simulation (sounds FUN right!?). Students at USUHS also receive O-1 pay on top of having all medical school expenses covered. They don't have to eat spaghettio's and ramen to survive! The commitment is also a little bit different -- 7 years will be owed after residency. 4 years of medical school + 4 years of residency + 7 years payback = 15 year commitment! It's a career.
Some of the reservations people have about becoming a military physician are the things that excite me:
- A lot of people dislike the fact that they may have to do a General Medical Officer (GMO) tour. This is 2 years before residency that could be spent being something such as an Underseas Medical Officer (UMO) or a Flight Surgeon. How awesome would that be!? How many doctors also get trained to be scuba divers, firefighters or pilots?
- Deployment. I will admit the D-word has a pretty negative connotation for me as a Navy wife, but doctor deployments sound FUN. I could go with the USNS Mercy or USNS Comfort to aid in disaster relief, or be the first stop in Germany for soldiers wounded in combat. Maybe I have watched too many military physician propaganda videos, but it looks so cool!
- Uniforms. I kind of dread getting dressed for work every day. Maybe that makes me weird as a female, but I am currently in love with the idea of not having to pick out clothes on a daily basis. I expect that will change with time, but for now it appeals to me!
I applied for both USUHS and HPSP. The HPSP application process was quite grueling and I actually still haven't heard back from the board who supposedly met in April. This was my second time applying to USUHS and my second time on the waitlist. They sure love to drag things out. But yesterday I finally got the call I have been waiting so many years for!
The one big downside to going to USUHS is that my husband and I will have to live across the country from one another for a couple years. He is headed to San Diego next, and my plan until I got into USUHS was to go to Western University, a DO school in Pomona, CA (about 2 hours from San Diego). We were still planning to live apart, but it would have been easier to see each other on weekends. On the other hand, I will make so much money by going to USUHS that cross-country flights will be more affordable!
Another great thing about going to USUHS is that I will be near my family in Maryland. They are pretty happy that I will be nearby too. I think my mom's words were, "ohmygoodness, ohmygoodness, OH MY GOODNESS!" My sister Sarah will be finishing up her degree at the University of Maryland, just 8 miles away. I can see some coffee/study dates in the future! Going to school in Bethesda also makes it more reasonable for us to buy a house, which is something we have been wanting to do. We are a bit sick of renting, not having enough space for our things, and not having a yard for the dogs. We were tossing around the idea of buying a house in Pomona, but were hesitant as we would probably never go back there after my 4 years of medical school. Maryland is a place we could see ourselves coming back to in the future, so investing in a house makes more sense.
Additionally, the unique structure of the curriculum at USUHS may allow me to see my husband more during medical school. Most medical schools are structured such that the first 2 years are classroom-based learning, and the second 2 years are rotations through the different specialties at a local associated hospital. USUHS has only 18 months of classroom learning before rotations begin, and rotations can be anywhere in the world! As long as I am willing to do the legwork to set things up, I could study infectious disease in Africa, neurology in Japan or pediatrics in Germany!
I also think I will fit in better with the students at USUHS than a civilian medical school. Compared to most of our Navy friends I am young, but compared to most medical students I am old. From talking to USUHS staff and students I will fit right in as a 25 year old student married to someone in the Navy. One of my student interviewers was actually engaged to a submariner! Don't read too much into this statistic, but the most recent graduating class had 62 more children than when they started.
Anyways, I could go on and on about how great military medicine and USUHS are. Did I mention job security? benefits? not having to deal with insurance companies? cutting-edge technology? travel? awesome patient population? Maybe I should have written this blog post for my admissions essay, and they wouldn't have strung me out til May! But alas, everything is working itself out. (Alas? Who am I, Dumbledore?)
In true Navy style I have hurried up and waited, only to hurry up again. I'm off to Officer Development School (ODS) next month! =O
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