Careers

Career Description

Being a Speech Pathologist, you know the painful effect speech difficulties can have on a person. You also know the exhilaration a patient has when they overcome their difficulties and learn to communicate freely. In the Air Force, your patients will range from children of Airmen with development issues to Airmen recovering from injury. And since you won't be running a practice and wrangling with insurance companies, you'll have more time to focus on patients and solve their problems.

Career Tasks

• Provide education, training, clinical support and program management
• Speech-language pathologists perform duties in the medical setting for patients with speech, language, feeding and swallowing disorders
• Speech-language pathologists treat those with biologic risks and developmental delays, head and neck cancers, brain injuries and other trauma-related disorders
• Opportunity to engage in research-based practice as well as training and supervision of technicians, students and resident physicians

Becoming a Direct Commission Officer

To ease your transition into the Air Force, you'll enter a five-week training regimen designed to educate you on the ways of both the military and military healthcare. You'll participate in physical conditioning five days a week, leadership training and classroom studies.