Hi. What's the difference between GDMO in RN, Army, RAF? What surgical specialties are offered in each? Thank you.

Hi Joe,

My knowledge of GDMOs in the RN and RAF isn't great, but I'll do my best to answer your question!

All 3 services start their GDMO time with a commissioning course, for the Army this is Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the RN go to Britannia Royal Navy College, Dartmouth and the RAF go to RAFC Cranwell.

The Army and Navy GDMOs both have long(ish) postgraduate courses (5/6months) after this to prepare themselves for the next 2 and a bit years of life as a GDMO.

The RAF course is shorter as they only have 1 year out of training (compared to the 3 years that the Army and Navy have). I believe they are then primarily based in the UK whereas the Army and Navy GDMOs will spend a fair bit of time travelling.

Army GDMOs tend to travel to a specific location whereas Navy GDMOs tend to spend time on ships or submarines (although may do similar jobs to the Army if they deploy with the Royal Marines).

In terms of surgical specialty, I did catch sight of the training posts available for the Navy and RAF last year. The three surgical training posts for the Army were; core surgical training for general surgery (3 jobs), core surgical training for plastic surgery (1 job) and core surgical training for T&O (2 jobs). The RAF didn't have any surgical training posts and the RN had 1 for general surgery. However this will vary from year to year depending on current manning requirements.

And in answer to your last question, if you do get a medical cadetship, you do not need to join UOTC, the Army understands that medical students don't have much spare time!

I hope that helps, let me know if you have any other questions I can help with.

Thanks a lot. This was very helpful.