Kendra Ireigbe, PA-C (’23), didn’t grow up dreaming of military service, yet the team-based atmosphere of the military had always appealed to her.
By the time she began applying to physician assistant (PA) programs, she knew she wanted to join the military and that the PA profession started with Navy Corpsman. She also knew trying to join the military as a PA without any other military experience can be difficult.
Then, she received The Health Services Collegiate Program (HSCP) scholarship.
According to the Navy’s HSCP page, the program is “The Health Services Collegiate Program (HSCP) is a scholarship program designed to provide financial incentives for students in designated health care professions to complete degree/certification requirements and obtain a commission in the Medical Corps (MC), Dental Corps (DC), or Medical Service Corps (MSC).”
Recipients of the scholarship are commissioned and placed on active-duty status while still in school. They receive full pay while completing their education and continue to serve as active-duty officers for a set number of years upon graduation.
Ireigbe said she chose to apply for the scholarship because serving in the Navy would give her “the opportunity to grasp an integrative, multidisciplinary understanding of medical care that focuses on establishing strategies to achieve health equity and addressing the barriers to disease prevention.”
Now, she is a Lieutenant Junior Grade and recently completed a five-week basic training required for all HSCP graduates.
She said the training was important because “we went to school for our professions, but none of us really know how to be an officer in the Navy. So, they teach you about some of the ins and outs of things. Because even though I’m a PA, I’m also an officer.”
The training also included a firefighter course and a boat safety course.
Ireigbe, who worked as a medical assistant for a vascular surgeon before applying to PA school is excited to get a chance to practice finally. After a short return home to Seattle, she will embark on her work as a PA at the Naval Hospital in Beaufort, SC. She will be working in primary care with active military, their dependents, and some veterans.
Deployment is always a possibility; however, she said it would likely be aboard a hospital ship rather than in an active war zone. They also utilize hospital ships for humanitarian missions in the aftermath of natural disasters.
Looking back, she says she is thankful that her time as a PA student gave her the insight she needed into military medicine.
During her second year of the program, she completed two internal medicine rotations at the Durham VA, which further cemented her military vision.
“Applying to Duke was like reaching for the stars, to be honest, and getting in and being able to talk to some of the other veterans and other active military people really helped shape what decision I was going to make.”
She added, “Everyone should always shoot for the stars because you just never know.”