Thursday, March 22, 2012

Dr Taylor, hero, mentor, father, husband and... wait for it... Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine.
If you missed this last meeting I feel a little bad for you, because it was probably my favorite meeting so far. We had Dr Taylor DO as a guest speaker come talk to us about life as a graduate of medical school, recipient of the military HPSP scholarship, and military flight surgeon.
As the meeting started out Dr Taylor talked a lot about the HPSP scholarship. What it was like, the pros and cons, and what his experience was with it. I felt that his explanation was very clear and concise, without any blatant bias. While I wont go over everything he said (unfortunately I am not an expert on the HPSP, and as such know very little about it) I will give you a few good points I felt he made concerning it.

Pros:
Obviously full tuition coverage is pretty amazing. Dr Taylor said that medical school would have been a lot harder had he been bogged down with the financial worries of paying for school. Contrary to my previously held belief he said only about 40% of the graduating USAF HPSP recipients go into military residencies, the rest will match into civilian residencies. He also noted that the larger the branch of military you go into, the more slots that branch will have for certain specialties (ex Army, the largest division of the military, will have the most slots for specialties, the AF will have less.)

Cons:
Deployment: While it wont happen while you are in med school you will most likely be deployed at some time. What branch of the military you go into will determine how long the deployment will be (ex Army is 10-15 months, AF is normally 6 months)
Navy Internships: The Navy will require you to take a year off your medical internship to serve as a GMO on a Navy ship (according to his knowledge).
As we all suspect, he said the hardest thing would be that you have to spend time away from your family.

Now Dr Taylor did spend sometime talking about his experiences as a flight surgeon. Unfortunately I don't think I could do it justice to try and give you the same experience that he gave us that night talking about it. Mostly he said he loved what he did, the men he has helped, and the time he served are not regretted. He showed some pretty knarley pictures of the surgeries he has performed, if you are interested I encourage you to contact him. He gave us his personal email and was very open to being contacted for letters of recommendation, and answering questions about his life and career. Contact a member of the presidency if you'd like his email address. He is a great man, and you'd be lucky to learn from him.

Well that was about it for the meeting. Dont forget that next Wednesday night AT Still Arizona is coming to present in our meeting about their medical school. Dont miss out on this great opportunity to talk with a representative from an actual medical school! It'll be same time same place. 5:30pm Wednesday night the 28th in LL 130. Make sure and tell your premed friends about it! Till then, keep dominating those classes of yours!

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