Advice for a military doctor

I was hoping I can get some advice on what to do over the next few years to improve my chances of getting into an Ortho program when I leave the military. I am currently about to start a 2 year tour as a Naval flight surgeon (basically primary care). Here are my vital stats:

- Graduated in '07 from top 10 med school (no honors or AOA; a pass/fail program)
- Completed a Gen Surgery Prelim Internship in '08 where I went to medschool
- Step I - 238, Step II 218
- have LORs from 1 orthopod, my school's chairman, a medicine attdg, and a couple gen surg from med school along with a couple gen surg LOR from internship
- no completed research projects

I want to know what I can do to make myself more competitive over the next two years that I will be working for the Navy (or four years depending on what the Navy offers me in 2 years). Because I will be deployed on an aircraft carrier 6 months out of a year, I do not think I can dedicate myself to much research unless it is solely chart review, and even that will be difficult since life on a carrier has very little down time. Will my LORs from med school and internship be useless since they were mostly written in 2006? Im absolutely open to going into a pgy-1 program when I leave the military, but would obviously prefer not to repeat my internship. I want to know what my chances are and what I need to do to improve them. Thanks.

If you are truly committed to orthopaedic surgery you will almost certainly need to repeat your Internship year (or at least be much more than "open to going into a PG-1 year"). There are occasionally PG-2 spots that open up but counting on that would be a mistake if you really want this career choice. Does not sound like you're going to have any opportunity (realistically) to do much to change your application while you're at sea so my advice would be to apply broadly (at least 80 programs from what you indicate your application will look like) and hope for the best.

Good luck and thank you for your service!

wnl