Medical Support Officer - General Background

General Background

The main role of the RAMC is to provide healthcare to the British Army in barracks and on operations, however leadership, command and control functions within the Corps are undertaken principally by Medical Support Officers. Professionally Qualified Officers (PQOs) within the RAMC, such as doctors, are in the Army to use their professional skills and as such are critical to the delivery of medical treatment. Leadership functions however rest with those officers who have gained a Commission either from attending the full Commissioning Course at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS), or outstanding soldiers Commissioning from the rank of Staff Sergeant who have attend the Late Entry Officers Course at the RMAS.

Commissioned officers within the RAMC who are professionally qualified are doctors, physiotherapists, pharmacists and environmental health officers. Although they pre-dominantly occupy clinical posts, they can assume senior non-clinical command roles such as Squadron Officer Commanding or Commanding Officer of a Regiment later in their careers should they complete the necessary Staff Officer qualifications.

The large medical support regiment structure is historic and was originally intended to deploy mobile facilities capable of treating large numbers of casualties during a full scale conflict. Due to the radically different nature of operations since the fall of the Iron Curtain it is rare now for medical units to deploy on a regimental basis and have thus restricted to support individual, smaller deployments. Medical Support Officers have found themselves crucial to the development of this new role, and have often found themselves either coordinating casualty evacuation on the ground or from a central operations room. Regimental appointments provide further opportunity for employment at a command level.