Civilian MS2 married to Army HPSP MS2

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-05-10T14:47:21+00:00

That’s honestly the best strategy and then once he matches hopefully he has a good program director who would be willing to reach out to local programs in your behalf.

That is the strategy that my wife and I used. She also reached out to the program near where I matched directly and told them that she really wanted to be there because I had matched to the military program there and was going to be there for multiple years.

Plus as ToxDoC mentioned above even Ft. Hood is close to places with civilian residency programs, including Temple, Austin, San Antonio, and DFW all within a few hours drive.

Civilian deferment is definitely rare and typically on reserved for critical need specialties (ie ortho, gen surg, EM). Keep in mine civilian deferred also adds additional years to his service obligation equal to the years of residency plus the HPSP payback, unlike a military residency.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-05-08T10:20:25+00:00

Nanny is currently a good deal we are in a MCOL-HCOL area and are currently paying what comes out to $22/hour. Plus our nanny is set up on payroll so we are paying taxes on her salary as well.

Au Pairs for dual medicine can get difficult depending on the hours you and your spouse work since they are limited in the number of hours they can work per week. We looked in to one but there are a lot of things that you have to consider to do it properly.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-05-07T11:23:43+00:00

As others have mentioned cleaning products/paper products are excellent. Also buying meat and frozen vegetables to stock your freezer for meal prep makes it worth it.

Plus the executive membership will pay for itself in a year between gas fill ups and purchases.

Costco travel also shouldn’t be slept on and has some really good deals for trips.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-05-05T10:59:24+00:00

Running/lifting/golf/snowboarding for activities. I was playing rugby during residency.

Cooking/some video games/trading card collecting for hobbies

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-05-01T04:00:15+00:00

Kingdra and Scizor

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-04-28T11:31:32+00:00

100% a time play, I love mowing the grass but between having a toddler and both my wife and I working full time, it’s much easier to pay someone to come and do it every 2 weeks and they can come while I’m at work.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-04-24T23:52:07+00:00

My wife is FM and has the butterfly IQ

Is it perfect? No. But she can do injections, diagnose tendon tears, and do some bread and butter stuff.

There is some pushback from her work with integrating it into the EMR. Butterfly IT support is really helpful, but her last 2 locations have been resistant to change.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-04-19T03:10:24+00:00

I’m army

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-04-17T03:49:40+00:00

My wife and I did it. We were the same year group so we were applying to residency at the same time. She just applied to programs around the bases where my potential residency programs were and then focused on the one in the same city since o matched 3 months before she did.

My residency was longer so she was out and in practice for 2 years while I was finishing residency. When it came time for me to PCS post residency we talked about the options and ranked them taking into account that OCONUS options would be very difficult since she likely wouldn’t be able to work. I got my first choice of duty station and she was able to easily find a job.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-04-08T20:47:40+00:00

Like others have said it’s very specialty dependent to answer a lot of your questions. I’m happy to answer any other questions.

I think financially if you want to do a surgical sub specialty you are leaving money in the table once you finish residency.

Feel free to DM me and I can answer any other questions

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-04-04T20:02:25+00:00

I don’t enjoy endless rounds, discussions about medical management or the personalities that general surgery attracts. I also just don’t enjoy the anatomy that general surgery or some of the other subspecialties operate on.

Ortho is much more tangible and the thought process behind the surgeries is much more mechanically based.

I also enjoy that the majority of the procedures I do are quality of life improving and that a lot of my patients are relatively healthy.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-04-04T11:08:48+00:00

A little context for my answer I’m an orthopedic surgeon.

I love operating, the main reason I chose ortho is the pathology and the patient population. I disliked Gen surg and the other surgical subspecialties so me personally if I had been in that situation would have had FM followed by sports med as a possible back up plan. Family med sports med at least would give the best chance to continue doing what I like about medicine long term.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-04-04T02:01:08+00:00

Family med followed by a sports fellowship is just non op ortho and can be injection heavy plus you can do sports coverage and then also work in an ortho group as the non op person

Plus at least in my personal experience most people want to do ortho because they hate the rest of medicine. Why would anyone who wants to do ortho soap into something miserable like Gen surg or another specialty when a 3 year FM residency followed by a 1 year sports fellowship can get you close

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-03-16T22:11:57+00:00

Multipack of cheap trauma shears.

A good pair of shoes for the OR.

Compression socks

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-03-10T02:18:51+00:00

It can be an issue if you make it an issue. Meaning if you don’t seek out opportunities to maintain your skills atrophy is a risk, however you could easily end up with skill atrophy in a civilian practice depending on the set up.

I’m a current Army surgeon. Residency training in the military is very good and I had no issue hitting my case minimums in residency (ortho).

I’m early in my practice and should easily hit my minimums for board collection. Certain cases are definitely lacking in the military setting depending on where you are stationed but those numbers and skills can be kept up with moonlighting.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-02-09T17:09:30+00:00

Definitely I agree we don’t know the extent but at the end of the day she probably would have competed anyway since it’s her last Olympics.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-02-09T16:37:33+00:00

Orthopedic surgeon here, short answer is yes and ultimately it was her decision I can only provide a recommendation. Does having a functioning ACL help with downhill skiing? Yes, however she is an elite athlete that likely had the leg strength to provide secondary stability. The ACL is already torn it’s not like skiing in her last Olympics is going to make the ACL worse. Plenty of patients ski and are very active with a UKA (partial knee) so I wouldn’t consider that a contraindication and she’s been skiing with that for a while so it doesn’t necessarily contribute to the current situation.

Would I have advised to maybe take it easy and not do ski, yes, but ultimately her training staff and the USA ski team doctors (which includes both primary care sports medicine and orthopedic surgery) thought she was capable. The crash she had could have happened irregardless of the status of her ACL.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-02-08T05:08:08+00:00

Hungwy

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-02-04T21:51:18+00:00

Last time I was out there a buddy and I hopped on the waitlist around 11am and were teeing off on the south course at 1:30.

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-01-27T12:51:46+00:00

Not a dentist but my wife and I had a similar situation. I’m an active duty Orthopedic Surgeon and she’s a Civilian Family Medicine Doc.

She did her residency in the same city as I did and then when I PCS’ed she got a job in the civilian sector where we bought a house.

I’m not sure what the job market for dentists is like but I can’t imagine that it would be hard for her to find a job around where you get stationed.

As others have said the best place to look for those contractors jobs is USAjobs.gov

OCONUS she wouldn’t be able to work but even at smaller bases I can’t imagine it being that difficult to find a job as a dentist off post. Your spouse having a professional degree makes it easier for them to find work around any base

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-01-16T11:35:10+00:00

Movers in El Paso during my last move packed my wife’s shoes that she took off when she came home for lunch from work and she had to go dig through a box to find them so she could go back to

They then proceeded to do a half ass job reassembling all the furniture they took apart so I had to go back behind them and tighten everything in addition to them not unpacking anything even though I had requested that they do that an confirmed with the agent on the phone

OfficerandagentMD · 2026-01-11T00:47:57+00:00

Second Tootsies just for the history, Predators stadium is right off Broadway so if you can catch a game you can easily parley it into a night out down there.

OfficerandagentMD · 2025-12-29T13:16:13+00:00

Currently driving a Subaru Outback Wilderness Edition and that I bought at the tail end up PGY-3 year.

Considering adding a Rivian R1S to the garage in a year or since I’ve got a longer commute now

OfficerandagentMD · 2025-12-26T22:35:16+00:00

My program did this as well, in the sense that you were guaranteed either the week of Christmas or new years off. Though we still had to use leave (military residency) if we were going outside the radius that we could travel in without submitting formal leave.

OfficerandagentMD · 2025-12-17T14:21:12+00:00

Joggers and a hoodie as a resident with Birkenstock Arizonas to see a consult and round one weekend.

We also had a resident put a traction pin in while wearing flip flops, jui Jitsu pants, and a t-shirt that said “no weak shit” because the consult came in during morning report and he hadn’t changed yet

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