I'm Major Sandra West. I first joined the forces as a medical student in 1985. I actually left the forces in 1992, at the end of my period of service, in order to go into civilian practice. I did that for seven years. In 1999 I moved back to the clinic in Ottawa as a civilian, and I was a civilian practitioner within the clinic for several years. In 2005 I transferred from the primary reserve list to the regular force and put my uniform back on. Since then I've been the base surgeon in Ottawa--other than a 10-month period in the past year, seven months of which I was in Afghanistan, in our Role 3 hospital.
As base surgeon in Ottawa, I am the clinical oversight for the clinicians who work in the clinic on a day-to-day basis. That is essentially the primary care clinic. Ottawa is structured a little differently from most clinics in that mental health does not fall directly under me, essentially because our mental health program is too large for that. They have their own oversight. However, I work closely with them. I also maintain a small clinical practice of my own.
In terms of the role of the clinic in Ottawa, we provide primary care and specialist care services where possible to all members serving in the Ottawa area. We do provide some backup to some of the bases nearby--Trenton, Kingston, Petawawa.
In terms of casualty repatriation, Ottawa of course has no large operational unit but some small ones, so we don't see units deployed out of Ottawa. However, given the special circumstances in Petawawa, it being a rural community with strains on their own medical system there, when Petawawa deploys, we back them up for their casualty care. Most of their casualties end up coming through Ottawa and, with our coordination, are cared for in the appropriate Ottawa hospital, which is usually the Civic campus.