rank

Ranks and Positions

Medical Officer

A starship’s Chief medical officer (CMO) is far more than a doctor. They have a wide variety of duties that involve them in away missions and the command structure.	On a starship or starbase a CMO’s most obvious duties involve running the medical department, which normally consists of several doctors and nurses and is responsible for catering to all the crew’s medical needs. In practice this means providing general practitioner care to a community of several hundred; in deep space that can mean everything from treating minor infections and broken bones to dealing with possession by an alien parasite.
	The CMO is responsible for organizing regular medical checkups for the entire staff, and has the authority to order anyone to sickbay.
Pulling rank	The medical staff can include a number of specialists, but the CMO is normally the leading surgeon and is trained to perform a wide variety of procedures.
	Since they often encounter new conditions, they typically demonstrate a remarkable ability to improvise.
	Before the introduction of the ship’s counselors, the CMO was also responsible for the mental well-being of the crew. Given the pressures of deep space exploration, this was a particularly important role. The CMO had the authority to remove any officer, including the captain, from duty if he deemed them unfit, though he was required to perform an examination to support his actions.
	CMO's retained this authority even after the widespread introduction of counselors.
	This authority was not related to the CMO’s rank. The position exists outside the normal command structure, and the CMO may have a relatively low rank; Dr. Julian Bashir was a Lieutenant when he took up his post on Deep Space 9. Or they may be quite senior – on the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D Dr. Beverly Crusher was a full commander.
	A ship’s doctor also provides medical support for remote Federation colonies. In the 23^rd century, when the Federation was colonizing many new worlds, a large part of the CMO’s duties involved providing regular medicals for people who were effectively stranded on distant worlds.
	In planetary emergencies, CMO's are often called upon organize triage facilities and provide aid to the wounded. They may also be charged with delivering and administering vaccines if a planet is threatened by a plague.
Alien physiology	During Starfleet’s greatest period of expansion, space exploration was extremely hazardous and the CMO routinely joined the landing party in order to provide medical aid if anyone was injured or infected during the mission.
	The CMO is also effectively the head of the live sciences department, and is responsible for studying the many new races a starship encounters as part of its mission. The opportunities this provides for research are incredible – Dr. Leonard McCoy’s ‘Comparative Alien Physiology’, compiled during his service aboard the USS Enterprise NCC-1701, is regarded as a classic medical text. On starbases, CMO's are more likely to be involved with long-term medical projects, such as Dr. Bashir’s widely admired immunology project on Bajor.