# Specialization



## MicroMeg (12 Mar 2016)

Hello, 

I have read that MOTP is for family medicine and they you could possibly specialize in a few chosen fields. What about specialization though an MD/PhD program? I am really interested in joining CAF, but my career goal is to be a clinical microbiologist, so I am not sure if  the CAF is the right way to go? or if they would fund this at all. 

Thanks, 
Megan


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## mariomike (12 Mar 2016)

MicroMeg said:
			
		

> I have read that MOTP is for family medicine and they you could possibly specialize in a few chosen fields. What about specialization though an MD/PhD program? I am really interested in joining CAF, but my career goal is to be a clinical microbiologist, so I am not sure if  the CAF is the right way to go? or if they would fund this at all.



This would be a good person to contact,

Sergeant Laen CAF Recruiter
https://army.ca/forums/members/51867
"I am one of the Specialist Recruiters for the Health Service Occupations."


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## Armymedic (12 Mar 2016)

MicroMeg said:
			
		

> Hello,
> 
> I am really interested in joining CAF, but my career goal is to be a clinical microbiologist, so I am not sure if  the CAF is the right way to go? or if they would fund this at all.



Sorry but if your looking in enter a research medical field, the CAF may not support that.

For specialists, majority begin as Family practice or ER specialty, and then there is a program for serving doctors to specialize in specific medical fields.

Obviously some specialist can direct entry, but I can't recall ever hearing of one in your field of interest.


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## Blackadder1916 (12 Mar 2016)

MicroMeg said:
			
		

> Hello,
> 
> I have read that MOTP is for family medicine and they you could possibly specialize in a few chosen fields. What about specialization though an MD/PhD program? I am really interested in joining CAF, but my career goal is to be a clinical microbiologist, so I am not sure if  the CAF is the right way to go? or if they would fund this at all.
> 
> ...



While the opportunities for clinical specialization may vary from year to year, the CF at present only consider the following specialities for additional pay in the Reg Force, therefore it is likely that they are the only medical specialities that would be considered for subsidized training.

general surgery;
anaesthesia;
internal medicine;
psychiatry;
orthopaedics;
diagnostic radiology;
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (Physiatry)


http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/about-policies-standards-benefits/ch-204-pay-policy-officers-ncms.page


> 204.216 - Pay – Medical Officers
> 
> 204.216(1) (Definitions) The definitions in this paragraph apply in this instruction.
> 
> ...


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## Nudibranch (13 Mar 2016)

MicroMeg said:
			
		

> Hello,
> 
> I have read that MOTP is for family medicine and they you could possibly specialize in a few chosen fields. What about specialization though an MD/PhD program? I am really interested in joining CAF, but my career goal is to be a clinical microbiologist, so I am not sure if  the CAF is the right way to go? or if they would fund this at all.
> 
> ...



They would not fund this.
The CAF mostly needs GDMOs (family medicine docs, who work in clinics on the bases, medically support various taskings/exercises, and obviously deploy). It has need of a relatively small number of select specialties; from the list you can see that, apart from Psych, they're specialties that are needed in a deployed hospital setting (surgeons, anesthesia, rads, internal med used largely as intensivists). 

The Reserves takes different specialties, but they wouldn't fund your studies. Nor really care about what your specialty is apart from "physician" unless they wanted to deploy you somewhere - of course if they did, it would be in a spot that a RegF specialist or GDMO would also fit, and "clinical microbiologist" is not it. They have deployed Plastics ResF MO in Maxillofacial spots (a Dental specialty), for ex.


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## Pusser (14 Mar 2016)

The MOTP program is designed to create MDs, so the PhD route to microbiology is unlikely.  However, the CAF does (or at least did at one point) have Medical Branch officers who are not doctors, nurses, etc and who are involved in research (I knew one years ago who was a biologist).  We also have a medical research facility in Toronto (DCIEM - Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine).  The only microbiology officer I've ever met though was a former lab technologist (an NCM occupation) who commissioned later in life.  Your best bet is to get yourself to a Recruiting Centre and ask questions.  However, be prepared for some funny looks. This is a small and very specialized field. You may need to be persistent.


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## Nudibranch (14 Mar 2016)

Pusser said:
			
		

> The MOTP program is designed to create MDs, so the PhD route to microbiology is unlikely.  However, the CAF does (or at least did at one point) have Medical Branch officers who are not doctors, nurses, etc and who are involved in research (I knew one years ago who was a biologist).  We also have a medical research facility in Toronto (DCIEM - Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine).  The only microbiology officer I've ever met though was a former lab technologist (an NCM occupation) who commissioned later in life.  Your best bet is to get yourself to a Recruiting Centre and ask questions.  However, be prepared for some funny looks. This is a small and very specialized field. You may need to be persistent.



It's CFEME, not DCIEM. The officers you're talking about are BioSciO's, who for entry need a bachelor’s preferably in human sciences (human bio, human factors engineering, ergonomics, occ hygiene, human phys), and must meet requirements for acceptance into a grad program in Human Factors, Physiology or Industrial Hygiene. That's what their work and research is about; there is no BioSciO involved in remotely anything like clinical micro (or much of clinical anything, apart of helping with the occasional human study into prosthetics).
No one's going to fund the poster's MD/PhD studies for her to become a BioSciO. And I doubt an MD/PhD would appreciate their salary, for that matter.


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## Blackadder1916 (14 Mar 2016)

Pusser said:
			
		

> . . .   However, the CAF does (or at least did at one point) have Medical Branch officers who are not doctors, nurses, etc and who are involved in research (I knew one years ago who was a biologist).  We also have a medical research facility in Toronto (DCIEM - Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine).  The only microbiology officer I've ever met though was a former lab technologist (an NCM occupation) who commissioned later in life.  Your best bet is to get yourself to a Recruiting Centre and ask questions.  However, be prepared for some funny looks. This is a small and very specialized field. You may need to be persistent.



Back in the dark ages, all Medical Branch officers, save physicians and nurses, were lumped into a single MOC -Medical Associate Officer (MAO) - with a multitude of sub-classifications . . . HCA, Pharmacist, Physio, PMed, Lab, Radiography, Bioscience . . . don't think I left anyone out, the dieticians became part of the Log branch as food service officers shortly after unification, even though there were a few uniformed "clinical dietician" slots at NDMC when it was a real hospital.  If my memory remains of the 1980s, when we started to separate into distinct MOCs, the "CFR heavy" trades acquired the majority of its officers by that commissioning programme - HCA (with a heavy sprinkling of OT from pointy-end MOCs and UTPNCM), PMED and RAD (exclusively CFR), and LAB (mostly CFR from Lab Tech but there were, IIRC, a couple of DEO Lab Officers with PhDs in either microbiology or biochemistry).  The Lab and Rad officers were almost exclusively posted to NDMC for actual clinical and management duties in their respective disciplines or as instructional staff for the Lab Tech and X-Ray Tech courses that we used to run in-house at NDMC.  The labs at the CFHs were usually run by techs at the MWO/WO rank level.

Of course, none of that applies to the question posed by the OP.  The CF never (well, at least I never heard of it) had any physicians who were certified in any form of laboratory medicine with the exception of the pathologists at NDMC.  With the closure of that hospital (and others) as a tertiary care facility, so went the need for and education subsidization of a number of specialties and sub-specialities.  At one time we had uniformed ENTs, Ophthalmologists, and Cardiologists (only at NDMC), a Urologist and a Dermatologist (at NDMC), an Oncologist (again NDMC, however there was some controversy about how she ended in that sub-specialty when she was sponsored for Internal Medicine) and of course that medical skill so needed in the military, Obstetrics and Gynecology (posting almost assured to either Lahr or Cold Lake).


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## Nudibranch (14 Mar 2016)

Blackadder1916 said:
			
		

> an Oncologist (again NDMC, however there was some controversy about how she ended in that sub-specialty when she was sponsored for Internal Medicine)



 :facepalm:   And I'm guessing nothing was done about it, beyond a head-shake and a "oh well, guess we've got an Onc." Ah ULO's and their lack of pers-tracking.
Did they even find out during residency, or only once she was done?


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## Pusser (14 Mar 2016)

Nudibranch said:
			
		

> It's CFEME, not DCIEM.



It used to be DCIEM (I know I'm dating myself).  However, I've never heard of CFEME.  A Wikipedia search says it's now Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) and we all know how accurate Wikipedia is...


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## Nudibranch (14 Mar 2016)

Pusser said:
			
		

> It used to be DCIEM (I know I'm dating myself).  However, I've never heard of CFEME.  A Wikipedia search says it's now Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) and we all know how accurate Wikipedia is...



Nobody's heard of CFEME, that's the tragedy of changing an identifiable name like DCIEM. All the internationals know what DCIEM was.

DRDC is the *civilian* DND research org, staffed by public servants. It has several centres across Canada, and its GenO-equivalent is the ADM(S&T). CFEME (Canadian Forces Environmental Medicine Establishment) is the very small military unit co-located with DRDC(Toronto).


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## Blackadder1916 (14 Mar 2016)

Nudibranch said:
			
		

> Nobody's heard of CFEME, that's the tragedy of changing an identifiable name like DCIEM. All the internationals know what DCIEM was.
> 
> DRDC is the *civilian* DND research org, staffed by public servants. It has several centres across Canada, and its GenO-equivalent is the ADM(S&T). CFEME (Canadian Forces Environmental Medicine Establishment) is the very small military unit co-located with DRDC(Toronto).



DCIEM did not become CFEME.  CFEME always was, at least since unification (according to a CFMSS pamphlet from the 1980s that I have) the military component of what was the DCIEM and is now the DRDC Toronto Research Centre.


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## Nudibranch (14 Mar 2016)

Blackadder1916 said:
			
		

> DCIEM did not become CFEME.  CFEME always was, at least since unification (according to a CFMSS pamphlet from the 1980s that I have) the military component of what was the DCIEM and is now the DRDC Toronto Research Centre.



They functioned pretty much as one entity when under the DCIEM name. Now much less so, separate co-located entities rather than a military and civi component of one entity, and DRDC itself is moving towards a sort of unification of its research centres under the DRDC umbrella and de-identification of specific centres (ie DRDC, not DRDC-Toronto).


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## MicroMeg (18 Mar 2016)

Wow, Thank you so much for all your replies I will take them into consideration before considering the MOTP, should I be accepted into medical school. I was hoping that given the recent deployments to Sierra Leone, for the outbreak of Ebola, that more doctors with training in infectious diseases would be asset, but I guess we are not at that point yet.


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## PuckChaser (19 Mar 2016)

MicroMeg said:
			
		

> Wow, Thank you so much for all your replies I will take them into consideration before considering the MOTP, should I be accepted into medical school. I was hoping that given the recent deployments to Sierra Leone, for the outbreak of Ebola, that more doctors with training in infectious diseases would be asset, but I guess we are not at that point yet.



We don't have nearly enough resources to do research, or have an agency in the CAF like USAMRIID. Our finite resources are busy enough dealing with soldiers like me breaking knees, backs, hips, ankles and shoulders.


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## Nudibranch (19 Mar 2016)

MicroMeg said:
			
		

> Wow, Thank you so much for all your replies I will take them into consideration before considering the MOTP, should I be accepted into medical school. I was hoping that given the recent deployments to Sierra Leone, for the outbreak of Ebola, that more doctors with training in infectious diseases would be asset, but I guess we are not at that point yet.



Well, ID is a sub-specialty of IM; CAF has sent its IM specialists on ID training in the past, a sort of fellowship. I think it still has one ID-trained IM, or would consider sending an IM for that trg if it doesn't, but these days it's looking for intensivists more than anything else.


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## MicroMeg (19 Mar 2016)

I had no idea IM had so many sub specialties, that is good to know thank you.


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