Also called: Navy Diving Medical Officer
Navy doctor who specializes in diving and submarine medicine, including treating decompression sickness in hyperbaric chambers.
Undersea medical officers go through dive training, care for Navy divers and submarine crews, and run pressure chambers where injured divers are 'recompressed.' It's one of the rarest jobs in medicine. Civilian hyperbaric medicine clinics hire these skills.
Military physicians are officers (O-3 to O-6). Figure combines RMC with medical special pays and board-certification incentives, 2026 estimate; surgical specialties sit at the top of the range. Residents earn the lower end.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Professional degree (MD, JD, DVM…), about 11 years after high school. Medical degree, then ~6 months of undersea medicine and diving training. Free-college benefits: Tuition Assistance (up to $4,500/yr) while serving, the Post-9/11 GI Bill (36 months of tuition + housing stipend) afterward, and SkillBridge internships before separating.
Ways in: Military, Professional school. Training cost: Get paid while you train.
Majors to look at: Biology, Chemistry.
Growing about average. Military specialties are not in BLS projections. The services recruit for this job every year and openings track force size and retention rather than market growth.
Low risk for 10 years. Treating divers in hyperbaric chambers and caring for submarine crews stays human.
Classes: AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics, PE / swimming.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.