Multiple career options through preventive medicine

So many medical students are unaware of preventive medicine. They don't even recognize that it's on the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) list. There's no mandatory requirement to go through preventive medicine rotations during medical school, so most students don't get exposed to this specialty. Here's some data from the ABPM (American Board of Preventive Medicine) about preventive medicine:

Preventive medicine has three specialty areas with common core knowledge, skills, and competencies that emphasize different populations, environments, or practice settings:

• aerospace medicine,
  
• occupational medicine, and
  
• public health and general preventive medicine.

The ABPM also offers fellowships in preventive medicine as well. Currently, there are two subspecialties (but I imagine this list will grow in the future):

• Medical Toxicology
  
• Undersea Hyperbaric Medicine

To learn more about preventive medicine, visit the American Board of Preventive Medicine (ABPM) website here: http://www.theabpm.org

Aerospace Medical Association

Have you heard of the Aerospace Medical Association? It's not usually called the AMA, because that would cause some significant confusion. The website is AMSA.org

The Aerospace Medical Association is the largest, most-representative professional organization in the fields of aviation, space, and environmental medicine. It is an umbrella group providing a forum for many different disciplines to come together and share their expertise. The Association has provided its expertise to a multitude of Federal and international agencies on a broad range of issues including aviation and space medical standards, the aging pilot, and physiological stresses of flight. AsMA's membership includes aerospace medicine specialists, flight nurses, physiologists, psychologists, human factors specialists, and researchers in this field. Most are with industry, civil aviation regulatory agencies, departments of defense and military services, the airlines, space programs, and universities. Approximately 25% of the membership is international.

So, if you're looking for a career change and you wish to leave the world of clinical medicine, maybe you need to think outside the box for a minute. Would you have any interest in aerospace medicine? So what exactly is aerospace medicine?

Aerospace medicine concerns the determination and maintenance of the health, safety, and performance of persons involved in air and space travel. Aerospace Medicine, as a broad field of endeavor, offers dynamic challenges and opportunities for physicians, nurses, physiologists, bioenvironmental engineers, industrial hygienists, environmental health practitioners, human factors specialists, psychologists, and other professionals. Those in the field are dedicated to enhancing health, promoting safety , and improving performance of individuals who work or travel in unusual environments. The environments of space and aviation provide significant challenges, such as microgravity, radiation exposure, G-forces, emergency ejection injuries, and hypoxic conditions, for those embarking in their exploration. Areas of interest range from space and atmospheric flight to undersea activities, and the environments that are studied cover a wide spectrum, extending from the “microenvironments” of space or diving suits to those of “Spaceship Earth”

If you love sci-fi, then this may be the perfect career changing opportunity for you. I'm a huge fan of science fiction and I think it would be a ton of fun to be a space doc. I'll never compare with Beverly Crusher, but I may have better manners than Leonard McCoy.