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New, with a few questions.
Thought I'd introduce myself first. DH and I have been married for nearly 4 years, and throughout this time he's been in the engineering field. However, for the past few years, he's been contemplating a career change and has decided that he'd like to join the Army and pursue medicine (either doctor, PA, or PT). His father is career Army, and my dad is USMC, so we both have some experience with military life (him more than I), but I have no idea what questions I should be asking regarding this transition/process.
So...my question. Any advice for how I can help him with the recruitment process and are there any "watch-outs" I should look for? Basically, I'll take any advice you all care to give. We've done research on requirements for the medical corps and such, but I guess I'm looking for some real-life perspectives.
TIA!
Re: New, with a few questions.
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He needs to make sure he's talking to a medical recruiter not just a regular one, because there are a lot of specifics that are different and regular recruiters aren't trained in them.
If he's looking into hpsp, which he should (it covers many different fields in medicine) you both should check out a forum called Studentdoctor . com. They have a mil med forum. It has a lot of super great info. I'm looking a using it for psychology and it has such good info on the process/pros/cons stuff like that. I'm on there a lot.
There is also a program to enter (FAP or financial assistance program) it basically pays back your loans and you enter when you are all done with school vs HPSP which pays for school as a scholarship and gives you a living stipend every month, as well as pays your book and such. In HPSP you're actually commissioned while you're in school as a 2nd Lt in the reserves and when you graduate you're a Captain on active duty.
Your payback commitment for hpsp is one year for every scholarship year (I believe pay back starts after you're licensed, but I've been specifically looking at psych so don't know about other fields as well). For an MD it will pay for the four years, then you do internship or residency -psych works that they want you to match with military sites first and then civilians. Idk about other fields. Other field also have different lengths of scholarships, i.e. psych is 2/3 years. They sometimes have loan repayment offers if you stay in past your inital committment.
I would also encourage him to look at all branches (well I think Marines falls under the Navy, it does for psych) they all might have something different to offer or have more/less hpsp spots, better sign on bonus, etc.
Feel free to ask me anything else, I have a friend going through the md process and we talk about it a lot.
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to make it easier on you, here are a few links.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/forumdisplay.php?f=72 (Mil med forum)
http://www.goarmy.com/amedd/education/hpsp.html (Army HPSP info) I'm under the impression that all the branches offer the same basic thing, although I am looking into Air Force, and have not checked out anything with the Navy at all.
HTH!
I changed my name
Thanks Jilly! We've been looking at the HPSP scholarship, so he has been looking at that information. Hadn't heard of the studentdoctor forum though, so I'll send him that way!
Good luck with your work as well!
I'm not much help as my DH is in the Ordnance branch. But talking to a medical recruiter is essential! I wish you and your DH all the best as you gather info about potential next steps. We are happy to help as best we can!
Although my H is not in the medical field, I'm a (civilian) physician and can speak to some of your questions. Your H should first decide what part of the medical field he would like to be part of. You mentioned MD, PA, and PT; these are VERY different careers, with significant differences in the amount of required training.
If he goes the MD route, getting into medical school will likely be harder than investigating the medical corps. When I started med school, I was bombarded with military recruitement info via the mail, and this was before I knew my H, with my having shown no interest in military medicine, and not in close proximity to any military installation. There were also people in the admissions and financial aid offices who connected students to military medical recruiters.