Courtesy Photo | Army Capt. (Dr.) Kristan Baird shares her journey as a new mother pursuing a lifelong...... read more read more
With one word, “congratulations,” in 2017, Army Capt. (Dr.) Kristan Baird’s life was changed.
She had just been accepted into the Uniformed Services University’s Enlisted to Medical Degree Preparatory Program, known as EMDP2, designed for enlisted personnel from across the military services to become future military doctors.
She did what many people would do — she called her mother.
“It was probably the happiest I've ever heard my mom be,” she said. “I still have the email saved. I’m going to print it out and hang it someday.”
EMDP2 is a two-year, full-time program that prepares enlisted service members for medical school through a coursework partnership with George Mason University in northern Virginia, clinical exposure at military hospitals and clinics, and mentoring from faculty and leaders.
A call to help people
Going to school for medicine would be a new adventure for Baird — a new mom herself to a daughter, Mina — as she navigated returning from deployment, parenting with her husband, Jasen, and now pursuing a lifelong dream.
“My dad had Parkinson's disease,” she said. “As a young girl, I always wanted to go into medicine … after my dad was diagnosed, I took more interest in anatomy.”
After high school in Michigan, she went to college to study neuroscience at Central Michigan University. She then decided to join the Army because she “wanted an adventure.”
While she always wondered if she would revisit her early ambitions of attending medical school, she knew the U.S. Army could give her the ability to continue helping and treating people.
“You’re going to get skills that you can use for nursing or if you want to become a doctor later on — so I went medic.”
Baird served as a medic in the Army for three years with the 101st Airborne Division. After a deployment to Afghanistan, she relocated to the DiLorenzo Pentagon Health Clinic in Virginia. There, she heard about EMDP2 through her first sergeant and decided to apply.
Now, she was ready.
“Being a medic was an excellent experience,” she said. “I had my first daughter. I came back from Afghanistan. I thought I would never get back to school.”
New mother, new student
The two-year EMDP2 program allows enlisted service members to remain active duty and retain their rank, pay, and benefits while completing their pre-medical coursework. The mentorship the program provided, Baird said, was instrumental in helping her grow.
“It was a wonderful community, both the military and George Mason. You could really connect with them. We had excellent people who were there to mentor us, help us, and guide us in the right path,” Baird said.
The academic preparation from EMDP2 paid off, as Baird found her first months in medical school at USU to be much easier thanks to what she learned in the program.
“Everything in the first three or four months, I didn't struggle at all because I knew all of it in depth, immunology, the white blood cells and what they do.”
Finding her focus — and focusing on family
In her third year of medical school, Baird knew what kind of doctor she wanted to be: an anesthesiologist. Her experience in combat led to her decision, she said.
“As a medic, you can be with a unit where you're maybe in the middle of firefights all the time, like with infantry, or you could just be back at the aid station — it can be chaos. We’re so used to combat medicine, and so the most natural path is to go to emergency medicine. I realized that everything I wanted to do in emergency medicine, you actually do every single day of anesthesia. I like the feeling of ‘now, it’s go time,’” she said.
Baird became an anesthesia resident at Brooke Army Medical Center in Joint Base San Antonio, Texas. She was now mom to a second daughter, Lily.
She credits her husband for supporting her throughout her journey to become the military doctor she is today: an anesthesiologist at Alexander T. Augusta Military Medical Center in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
“All thanks to him, there's no way I could get through it without him. He’s been a supportive husband who's helped me do all the stuff I wanted to do,” she said. “Now, he makes my lunch and cooks dinner. He packs my lunch and gives it to me when I go out the door every morning.”
Aside from her family support, Baird said teamwork made the pursuit of her dream possible — and where she is today, rewarding.
“I had the best experience in EMDP2, I made close friends, really great teachers that you can rely on. They did a great job getting us a good education,” she said. “It's very much a team, which is another reason that drove me to pursue this field. The fact that you're all working as a team for this one goal. To help the patient.”
Baird joked that her daughter has a different perspective on motherhood: “Mina said, ‘when I'm a mommy and in school’ … I had to remind her that people don't go to school forever,” she said. “But I can't see myself being happier going a different route. I finally obtained this.”
| Date Taken: | 11.21.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 11.21.2025 09:52 |
| Story ID: | 552025 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 42 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Lifelong dream: A U.S. Army mother’s journey from medic to doctor, by Andrew Ortuzar, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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