Courtesy Photo | Air Force Capt. (Dr.) Laura Barrera, flight surgeon for Moody Air Force Base in...... read more read more
It’s 2015, and then-Air Force Senior Airman Laura Barrera’s day off while assigned to the 633rd Medical Group at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia. She received a call to come into her clinic for an unplanned meeting.
She was nervous. Having applied to the Uniformed Services University’s Enlisted to Medical School Preparatory Program, or EMDP2 — she had been waiting for word whether she would realize her dream of becoming a military doctor.
“I came to the desk at labor and delivery, and I saw everyone there that helped me with my application,” she said. “And then my group commander comes in ... he tells me I got in.”
Barrera was accepted into the intensive, pre-medical program that charts enlisted service members on a course to become military physicians through a partnership with George Mason University. The program offers mentoring and Medical College Admission Test preparation while allowing students to maintain their current rank, pay, and benefits while going to school full-time.
For Barrera, the mentoring had already started.
“I had fantastic, enlisted supervisors and leadership that helped review my package. They made sure I had everything to apply,” she said. “I have been lucky in my career to always have leadership that has looked out for me and has always pushed me forward and helped me up.”
Striving for the sky
Growing up in the wide-open spaces of Wyoming, Barrera had two older brothers, Erik and Hugo, that had enlisted in the U.S. Navy.
“I saw my brothers serve, and they got deployed right away after 9/11,” she said. “I looked up to them highly.”
She joined the U.S. Air Force, enlisting as a flight medicine tech in the reserves for four years while getting her bachelor’s degree from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. When she began active duty service, Barrera worked as a technician in the labor and delivery ward with the 633rd Medical Group at Joint Base Langley-Eustis where she learned her true calling: patient care.
“I really enjoyed working with patients, and I knew what I wanted to do to progress my career more,” she said. “It took time for me to understand and realize what it means to take care of patients.”
At 27 years old, Barrera thought she was “too old” for medical school. While discussing her career path with a military physician — who shared with her that he was in his mid-30s with five children when he started medical school — another doctor popped his head into the office and said, “Do you know about the EMDP2 program?”
“I looked it up,” Barrera said. “I was like, ‘I can do this.’”
From enlisted service member to medical student
She relocated to Manassas, Virginia, and started classes at George Mason University, taking on tough coursework to include “biochemistry, organic chemistry, anatomy, and physiology — every topic relevant for us to get into medical school,” she said. “The first year is preparation for all the classes in order to get into medical school. During the whole time period, you're also doing MCAT prep.”
While school was challenging, Barrera said top-notch professors in the program made the work fulfilling.
“The professors that taught us are phenomenal. They're some of the best people that I could have ever asked to teach us how to do medicine, how to prepare. I think it's a fantastic school. While you’re in school, the program prepares you to be not just a doctor, but a leader in the military.”
She also met fellow enlisted service members in the program, bonded in service and their unique path to a medical career.
“There were 12 of us military members from different branches. We would help each other study, and we were together all the time.”
When Barrera was ready to take the MCAT exam, she was embarking on another milestone — having a baby.
“I was eight months pregnant taking the exam,” she said. “It was stressful, but I got through it.”
Barrera was accepted into medical school at USU’s F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine in 2017 in Bethesda, Maryland. They started on their academic journey rooted in friendship and service.
“We would carpool from Manassas, Virginia, to Bethesda every single day while we were in medical school. We basically became a family,” she said. “These people are still my best friends. We all visit and talk to each other. Every year we take a picture together because we served together.”
After graduation and receiving her commission to the rank of captain, Barrera started her residency in emergency medicine — all the while aiming high for her military career goals.
“I knew I also wanted to do flight medicine, and the operational emergency medicine program partners with Virginia Commonwealth University,” she said. “I wanted to be more operational within the Air Force, so it was important to understand how we truly take care of our patients — I knew emergency medicine could teach me that.”
While in the emergency room at VCU Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia, the work mirrored the multiple, urgent tasks she experienced while deployed.
“I was forced to learn how to take care of all different patients and figure out what each person needed,” Barrera said. “I had an appendectomy in one room and then within 10 minutes, I’d get called over for a trauma injury.”
“Even when it was scary, it’s like ‘I can do this. I can take care of these people,’” she added. “It forces you to think on your feet, figure out the triage process, and then your resources, which is highly useful to the military.”
Flight surgeon and family doctor
In 2025, Air Force Capt. (Dr.) Barrera now serves as the flight surgeon for the 74th Fighter Squadron and as an emergency medicine physician at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. She enables airmen to stay in peak health to continue their service in the air.
“I am a squadron physician that's embedded in the squadron with the airmen. I fly with the C-130's to understand the stuff that they see, the stuff that they go through, what happens when they're on a flight,” she said.
She considers her squadron her family, and she takes care of theirs on the ground.
“My patients are not just my patients — they’re also my friends. I know that what I'm doing is really impacting them and all the things that they do,” Barrera said. “Since I'm emergency medicine, I can help their families. I can see children if there’s an urgent care need, like a fever. It's like being the family doctor of your family, but it's a squadron.”
“I like being the one that people depend on.”
Barrera also has her own family — her husband and nine-year-old daughter — who she credits with supporting her every step of the way to her unique path to military medicine.
“My family is No. 1. I wouldn't have been able to do any of this without my husband, John Maurice. He has been a rock,” she said. “I have gone through a lot of mom guilt, having been deployed, but he’s never made me feel any less of a person for missing a birthday or holidays.”
While it was a challenging route from enlisted airman, to student, to primary care physician for the U.S. military’s top pilots, Barrera says the reward is worth it.
“It is hard, but it's hard for a reason. Nothing in life that's good is easy,” she said. “There are so many paths to medicine, but the program makes physicians true leaders in what they do and the patients that they care for.”
“The rewarding part is actually having that connection with the patients and being passionate about taking care of them.”
For information about the EMDP2 program, visit: www.usuhs.edu/emdp2.
| Date Taken: | 12.08.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 12.08.2025 11:23 |
| Story ID: | 553372 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 12 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, An enlisted airman’s journey to flight surgeon, by Robyn Mincher, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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