ACOFP Blog

The Student Association of the ACOFP is partnering with Resident Council on a number of exciting initiatives, including the Resident Council Spotlight series of interviews and articles. We’re excited about the insight and perspective residents are able to provide to help students plan for residency and become active with ACOFP.

For our next article in the series, students sat down with Josh Herring, DO, to learn more about his residency program, why he chose to be a part of the ACOFP Resident Council and what a typical day is like as a resident at an Air Force hospital.

Meet Josh Herring, DO

FAMILY MEDICINE RESIDENT, PGY-1

eglin air force base hospital
florida

Acofp resident council region 5

Why did you choose this residency program?

I am currently a second-year resident at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. I chose this program based on many characteristics, but the overall reason was that the faculty seem to care about the residents and their learning throughout this process. Many of them feel that the time spent in training are the most important years of our careers because this is when we will determine what our future practice will look like. Our experiences in residency will shape our futures within the military and the health care system.

Why did you choose family medicine?

I chose family medicine because I truly enjoyed so many aspects of all of my rotations and I realized on my cardiology rotation that it was hard for me to not want to know more about the other facets of the patients’ lives aside from their heart health. It offers a vast array of possible future career paths that is not necessarily available to other specialties. Family medicine also provides a straight track into flight medicine for the Air Force utilizing their Operational Graduate Medical Education program. This allows you to complete residency training in a primary care specialty such as family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine or emergency medicine and proceed straight into a flight medicine billet upon completion of residency rather than waiting until after you have completed an assignment as a family medicine (non-flight medicine) provider, then switching over to flight medicine after.

What is a typical day like in your life as a resident?

Day-to-day life as a resident at Eglin is highly variable depending on what rotation you are on. If you are on our family medicine inpatient team you could start your day with rounding on patients, get called to a neonatal resuscitation and finish the day with a continuity clinic where you see one of your duration of pregnancy patients who you are following from conception to delivery. The following week you could be on our procedural rotation where you gain experience in various clinics such as our FM Dermatology clinic in which you perform skin biopsies, remove skin lesions and otherwise treat the skin. You also get training with vasectomies and female long-term contraception and colposcopy within this rotation—all excellent experiences to provide full scope of care upon leaving residency!

Why did you volunteer to join the Resident Council?

I volunteered for the Resident Council off a recommendation from one of our faculty advisors who is active within ACOFP. He felt that I would be a good fit and could be the first military resident to represent on this council and provide a contact from within our system to be able to provide insight into what feels like a relatively isolated system. The faculty member thought that I could also utilize the Resident Council to expand some of the resources available to residents for osteopathic manipulation training and share the information available to residents regarding its use within residency and clinical practice afterward.

Read more about Josh Herring, DO, ACOFP Resident Council Region 5 Representative.