Aviation Medicine

It was the best thing in my life, best thing that happened to me because here I was Deputy Commander of the Central Aircrew Medical Board and what they actually had done, was channel me in a direction where I would remain for the rest of my life, you know. At that time I wanted to do obstetrics and gynaecology and initially they said well you go to Moosejaw and do a couple of years then you’ll get the rest of your post grad. But instead of that they channelled me into aviation medicine and I have no regrets about that. Aviation medicine is all medicine as it applies to the air environment. For instance, fitness of pilots to fly, fitness of patients to fly, fitness of flight attendants to fly, if they’re pregnant and at what stage do you ground them. Flight times and flight duty times, pilot fatigue, research, accidents investigation, lecturing. As you can see it’s a pretty wide field and you have to be very well informed about all the areas of medicine.