A little background
My wife is a medical resident, finishing her residency at a 501(3)(c) hospital establishment and has signed a contract to continue working at the hospital post-residency. Given that I was not aware of the residency hospital being a 501(3)(c) establishment until the last few days, we did not capitalize on her three years of public service. Also during her time in residency, her loans were in a deferment state due to the low income residents receive, so we made no payments.

Info I found thus far
I watched Heather’s seminar at Duke Law and researched a few sites. From my research, it sounds like I can get her credit for those years with the proper form and signatures from HR at the hospital. The part I am unclear on is how that would be handle given no payments were made to the student loans. Is it possible to retroactively pay the PAYE or IBR payments she should have made during that time to make sure we get credit for those 36 payments? Are there other options we could pursue?

Any advice on how to utilize her last three years of service to her benefit would be greatly appreciated, as I feel we made a mistake by not knowing this previously. Thank you in advance!