A physician with years as a Specialist Physician who recently took a Junior Specialist role abroad asked which NOC code to use — 31100 (Specialist in Clinical Medicine) or 31102 (General Practitioner) — and what happens if the wrong one is chosen.
- When in doubt between two closely related medical NOCs, members suggested defaulting to the more general/conservative code (General Practitioner, 31102) to reduce the risk of a mismatch between your claimed NOC and your actual current duties.
- Doctors specifically must complete their Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) through the Medical Council of Canada (MCC), not WES — this is a common point of confusion, since WES is the default ECA body for most non-medical professions.
- On the wrong-NOC risk: members noted that IRCC officers can occasionally suggest a correction based on your reference letter, but this is entirely at the officer's discretion and considered a rare event — you should not count on IRCC to catch or fix a mismatched NOC for you.
Given the officer-discretion point is unreliable, the safer approach is to carefully match your reference letter's stated duties to the NOC you select before submitting, rather than assuming IRCC will flag or correct an error.