The military has produced a cadre of medics and corpsmen who are trained to operate independent of a medical doctor. These advanced trained military people operate with special units, submarine duty, winter over at the South Pole, etc. Their skills are at the level of a PA already and many of them do go on to become Pas. But, the majority does not. The problem is that they receive no credit for all their years of independent duty and are required to start over again from scratch. Yes they have the advantage of experience but to have a free hand all those years in the military and to be kicked to the bottom again is not worth most of their time. It’s an insult for the most part, so most of their skills just vanish when in fact they could have been used in the civilian sector. But there has been no negotiation on their behalf so they leave the military and just waste away. If our government was self sustaining we would immediately try to work these folks into the civilian quarter in order to supplement the health care shortage.
