I'm Lieutenant-Colonel Leilani Doyle,
I'm an anesthesiologist in the Canadian Armed Forces.
I decided to join in medical school because I was looking for something a little different,
maybe a little bit of adventure.
The money was a bit of a motivation as well.
Like our civilian colleagues, I work at the Ottawa Hospital.
But when there is a deployment, there is work-up training that is involved,
and I would be called to do that.
And then for the deployment, obviously, I would be gone for the duration of that deployment
and working with the Canadian Armed Forces during that time.
It's incredible how the camaraderie just comes together,
that's definitely one thing that I miss when I'm working in a civilian setting
because we tend to hang with our own and maybe are a little bit more in silos,
whereas on a deployment, we tend to hang out more as all the specialists together,
and that makes us work better together, I think.
There's definitely things that I have done that I would definitely categorize as exciting -
flying in the back of a Chinook while they're doing tactical flying;
flying in an F-18;
I've done training such as basic dive medicine and flight surgeon training,
which has enabled me to work with other countries;
I've been on training in Europe, where I worked with other flight surgeons.
I don't think I would have ever had these kinds of opportunities anywhere else,
and I'm thankful for that.