How To Beat The Draft Board/Claim4

Claim #4: Essentiality of Occupation (2-AM)

This applies only to people who work in the healthcare industry. Curiously enough, neither in our training literature nor the lectures was a "length of time in the field" consideration listed, which would make this seem to be a good fields to get into late in the game for a deference, like ministerial school. However, that doesn't mean that a board won't weigh the job change. Also, note that healthcare workers may be in double jeopardy for being drafted, as both the general and healthcare draft lotteries could select them (whichever lottery selects them first gets them). So, it's a double-edged sword. Ministerial school is probably a safer bet.

Critical roles

You not only must be working in the healthcare industry, but you must be filling a critical national or community healthcare need. This can be the practice of medicine, health research, teaching health care professionals, or being engaged in the delivery of other direct health care services. You must be unable to be replaced within the foreseeable future because of a shortage of other persons with the same qualifications and skills. Removal of you for your position would have to cause a lengthy loss of effectiveness in health care activity, especially in the community. For community needs essentiality, you must be currently practicing in the community in question or be contracted to serve there in the future, in a way that the breaking of the contract would lead to the reduction or elimination of the service (only concerning a contract signed at least six months before the date of the induction order and with a start date not later than 90 days after the induction date).

Teachers and researchers

Note that not only can direct health care providers get this exemption, as mentioned, but also teachers and researchers. They must demonstrate that removal of them from their positions would cause a long term shortage or elimination of critical health care teaching or research services. From the board's perspective, they're going to be looking for people who, if removed from their jobs, their community or the nation will be clearly harmed more than it supposedly benefits from having the citizens serving in the military.

Example cases

A good example of an essentiality claim is a doctor who is one of the few health practitioners on a remote island. Technically, however, it could apply to people as diverse as a teacher in a medical school or a person writing software for medical research, so long as they can demonstrate how important their work is to the future of local and/or national healthcare.