physician/medical officer for MEPS

[CenteredDoc]

Greetings,

I recently got an offer to work as an Assistant Chief Medical Officer at one of the MEPS. I want to reach out to to see if any physician here ever held this position/job before. I want to know what to expect before taking on this position. How are the hours like? How is the workflow during the working hours (I'd assume it depends on how busy the station is)? How common is it that you have to travel to another location to cover shortage? How often you have to come in on the weekend? Please share your experience here or feel free to PM me. Thanks!

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[armytrainingsir]

I’ll be interested to hear any real first hand accounts of what being a MEPS doc is like.
I’ve always imagined it as a stereotypical govt bureaucratic job.

 

[CenteredDoc]

I’ll be interested to hear any real first hand accounts of what being a MEPS doc is like.
I’ve always imagined it as a stereotypical govt bureaucratic job.

stereotypical govt bureaucratic job? Can't say I have a lot of experience in that area. What is that like?
...Besides clinical medicine, I've worked as a research associate at one of a big research institutions, running my own research project which involved a lot of admin duty as I did not have a lot of help from our administrative assistant.

 

[armytrainingsir]

stereotypical govt bureaucratic job? Can't say I have a lot of experience in that area. What is that like?

Fixed hours
Unwillingness to do anything outside of the published job description
Work at three speeds: Slow, Slower, Stopped
Your nurses etc are picked by someone else, you have zero control over them as they have no responsibility to you or to help/assist you
No sense of urgency for any task
Able to ignore emails, phone calls, appointments etc from anyone your equal or lower
Being able to stand in front of 'the waiting public' while discussing your upcoming weekend plans and only turning to help those you are there to help when you feel like it.
Conveying the attitude that every single thing you do at work is an undeserved favor for the one for whom you are doing it.

In summary, take every bad experience you have ever had getting a driver's license, getting a car tag and mailing a package, squish those experiences together, and realize that is your new work environment. And you will ultimately be, in some ways more that others, one of them.


Like I say, that is my preconceived notion. While I may be wrong, the memes and stories from rank and file soldiers on their MEPS doc experience would prove me more correct than not.

My own experience was with a doc at least 100yo whose sole job was to read the same script to me and everyone else
"Son, do you smoke marijuana?"
"No sir"
" Dont lie to me, son. Do you smoke marijuana?"
"No sir"
scribble, scribble
"NEXT!"

That was decades ago, and still a vivid memory.

 

[DMBandFan86]

Looking at buttholes and the duck walk all day. Paperwork and incompetence from the people around you. Sounds like fun.

 

[orbitsurgMD]

Greetings,

I recently got an offer to work as an Assistant Chief Medical Officer at one of the MEPS. I want to reach out to to see if any physician here ever held this position/job before. I want to know what to expect before taking on this position. How are the hours like? How is the workflow during the working hours (I'd assume it depends on how busy the station is)? How common is it that you have to travel to another location to cover shortage? How often you have to come in on the weekend? Please share your experience here or feel free to PM me. Thanks!

"Assistant Chief" medical officer, suggests there is a chief missing an assistant. Consider what that could mean: so many candidates they need extra docs for intake. Doubtful. Lazy SMO who hides out somewhere and does "paperwork"/ surfs the web and takes leave whenever leaving the day-to-day work for others to do sounds more plausible.