All Posts Tagged With: "medical school"
Getting into med school
High marks aren’t enough
Even with high marks and impressive extracurricular experience, there are no guarantees when it comes to getting into med school. At least, not in Canada. The harsh reality is, there are far more highly qualified applicants than there are available seats.
The statistics vary from province to province, but as a med school hopeful living in Ontario, my chances are about 19 per cent (or 1 in 5). Yes, this is just a raw number–it doesn’t take grades, extracurricular activities, or MCAT scores into account. For applicants with high (or low) marks, or applicants who are involved in some sort of incredible medical research, the chance of success isn’t 19 per cent. But there are lots of students with impressive GPA’s, great MCAT scores, and plenty of medically-related volunteer work, and they’re all competing for the same number of limited spots.
How can an applicant stand out?
A few years ago when I interviewed Dr. Evelyn Sutton, assistant dean of admissions and student affairs at Dalhousie University, in an article for Maclean’s Professional schools issue, she remembered one successful applicant whose “unique” extracurricular activity made her stand out from the pack: she was a champion skip-rope jumper.
Some med schools, including Dalhousie, still want to see medically related experience on an applicant’s transcript. The important thing to remember: med schools are looking for “well-rounded” applicants.
I’m not suggesting that a med school hopeful should volunteer or suddenly develop a “passion” simply because it might improve their chances of getting in. After all, the admissions board can see right through that kind of act. Trying to be a good Samaritan just because you think it’ll make you look good will probably have the opposite effect.
What does this mean for the rest of us? How can applicants present themselves in the best possible light?
“Don’t be just a computer geek,” advises Dr. Barry Ziola, of the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine, “because computer geeks do not make good physicians.”
-photo courtesy of RambergMediaImages
Want medical degree, will travel
Getting into into med school abroad may be easier, but it’s tough to come back
Amie Dmytryshyn did everything right. She volunteered to counsel patients at Vancouver General Hospital on Thursday nights. She spent three days a week assisting a quadriplegic teenager. On weekends, she attended intensive all-day MCAT prep and on weeknights she squeezed in two extra hours of studying to prepare for the exam. She did it all while maintaining an A average in her chemistry-heavy human kinetics program at UBC. “Then I got one letter and my dreams were crushed,” says Dmytryshyn, now 30.
Erik Vakil, 28, was so determined to get in that after being rejected from a dozen programs in 2006, he marched straight back to Dalhousie and retook every class in which he didn’t have an A. The following January, he was rejected again. “It was only after the second rejection that I realized I wasn’t going to get in,” says Vakil. A friend suggested he try Ireland. He stayed up late that same night to finish his application. Weeks later, he was called for an interview with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).
Considering only one in five of the nearly 11,000 students who apply to medical schools across Canada each year are admitted, Dmytryshyn and Vakil are not alone. Some apply again. Most move on to other careers. But for students who see medicine as a calling, who can’t imagine doing anything else, there are other options. Six years after she got that fateful letter, Dmytryshyn is preparing to take over as chief resident of pediatrics at B.C. Children’s Hospital in her hometown, Vancouver. In August, she married her long-time partner, Byron Hyttenrauch, and the couple are planning a honeymoon in Tahiti. Meanwhile, Vakil is entering his fourth year of med school in Ireland with contacts at the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic already in his address book.
It was a gamble, but both students are glad they applied overseas. “Originally, it was Plan B,” says Dmytryshyn, who attended St. George’s University on the Caribbean island of Grenada (pop. 110,000). “But as soon as I got there, I realized that everyone’s there because being a doctor is all they ever wanted to do. Think of the passion that comes from people willing to go halfway around the world to study.”
It certainly takes passion to go to an international medical school. An estimated 1,500 Canadians were studying at foreign medical schools in 2006. While there’s no clear 2010 estimate, medical schools in the big three countries where Canadians study—Australia, Ireland and Grenada—all report triple the number of Canadians just four years later. Admissions aren’t as tough in these countries, but tuition can be jaw-dropping. St. George’s, for example, costs $200,000 for a four-year degree, compared to the $80,000 it costs to attend the University of Toronto. On top of that, most international medical graduates (known as IMGs) are unable to return home for several years after graduation, because—despite a doctor shortage—the number of residencies in Canada is tightly capped. What’s worse, provincial governments and medical schools give first pick of residencies (three to five years of postgraduate training) to Canadian-trained doctors and leave only scraps for the often-discouraged IMGs. This spring, 88 per cent of graduates from Canadian medical schools got their first choice of residency; only 21 per cent of IMGs received a position at all.
Dmytryshyn wasn’t even allowed to apply for the first round of residency placements in her home province of British Columbia. She could have found a spot more easily if she had been willing to sign a “return of service agreement” that says she would work for five years in an area of the government’s choice (usually an isolated northern community) in exchange for a spot. A northern town is not the type of place Dmytryshyn could see herself spending five years, especially considering her husband works in shipping, a field that requires him to live near the ports of Vancouver. She knew her chances weren’t good, but she crossed her fingers and held out hope for a spot near home. “I lost sleep over it, of course,” says Dmytryshyn. “When applying back to Canada after being in school for eight years, you really hope you can be near your family.” Dmytryshyn is one of the lucky ones.
What’s frustrating for many IMGs is that, even with the small chance of getting a spot, the equivalency process can be gruelling. In Quebec, equivalency includes both language tests and the Medical Council of Canada Evaluating Exam (MCCEE), an advanced, $1,500 test that Canadian graduates don’t have to take. Students say the process requires taking a year off after graduation to complete. Even more frustrating for IMGs is the fact that residency spaces reserved for domestically trained doctors sometimes go unfilled without ever being offered to them. Joe Schwarcz, a Ph.D. chemist and head of McGill’s Office for Science and Society, sits on the medical school’s admissions committee. He says it’s a “torturous job” to choose 160 students for first-year medical school each year, because it means rejecting “at least as many equally qualified applicants.” Considering those painful decisions, he wonders why IMGs can’t apply for leftover spots reserved for students at Canadian universities. “These students are getting residencies in the U.S., so why are they good enough for the U.S. but not Canada? It’s crazy,” says Schwarcz.
No science? no worries
Getting a C in chemistry may not be a barrier to that white coat, as med schools reassess their admissions
If you ever wanted to be a doctor, but were scared off because of all the science you would have to learn, you may soon be in luck. Canadian medical schools are taking a closer look at their admissions practices, and prerequisites like the much-feared Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) are no longer seen to be as imperative as they once were.
Just how picky medical schools should be about students being well-versed in the scientific foundations of human anatomy is a decades-old debate. But now, lacking a solid grasp of science might not be a barrier to getting that white coat.
For 25 years, Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York has reserved around 30 spaces for students who haven’t taken physics, calculus, organic chemistry or the MCAT. A recent study on the Mount Sinai program, co-authored by the school’s dean emeritus Nathan Kase, concluded that students admitted through the humanities and medicine stream “performed at a level equivalent to their premedical classmates.”
In Canada, there are already two medical programs, McMaster University and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, that have no science requirements, either through course prerequisites or the MCAT. Several others are reviewing their core application requirements.
The University of British Columbia is undergoing a curriculum review that could see a revamping of at least one first-year medicine course so that it no longer presumes an extensive science background. According to Joseph Finkler, associate dean of admissions for medicine, that could open the door to revising the selection process. “It is possible that we will end up with multiple admissions streams, including one without the prerequisites and MCAT,” he said. Lewis Tomalty, Queen’s University’s vice-dean, medical education, says that while some science is “necessary,” encouraging students with a range of academic backgrounds to apply is beneficial to the classroom. “We’re looking at how extensive [science prerequisites] have to be and are certainly looking to change the actual admissions requirements,” he said. Similarly, the Université de Montréal has put a committee in place to review whether its list of science requirements creates an unnecessary barrier to pursuing a career in medicine.
But the school that is farthest along in this process is McGill University. In July, McGill announced that it would no longer require prospective students to take the MCAT. The faculty of medicine will also be reserving three spaces for “non-traditional” students, giving great weight to things like work experience. They will also be exempt from having to complete their first degree full-time, a common prerequisite intended to ensure students can handle the workload. Saleem Razack, assistant dean of admissions at McGill, says these policy changes are needed “so that the excellence that students with diverse life experiences can bring to the medical profession can be assessed and valued.”
The key is finding the right balance, says Miki Rifkin, who oversees the humanities and medicine program at Mount Sinai. While her students are exempt from most science prerequisites, they still have to take introductory chemistry and biology, and have an otherwise exemplary academic record. The goal is to encourage students who might otherwise be deterred at the prospect of the MCAT to pursue medicine. “We want to make a difference for students passionate about some non-science area,” she said.
“The older way of thinking is that doctors should be scholars and scientists first,” says Terry Wuerz, who earned his medical degree from the University of Manitoba in 2007. “I think it’s great that med schools are starting to recognize the different roles doctors play.”
There are, of course, hurdles to reform. Using the MCAT and having science prerequisites are very useful for sorting through thousands of applications. “How do you choose the ones you’re going to interview?” asks Tomalty. While Mount Sinai non-science students do well overall, they do struggle during their first two years, and perform less well on medical licensing exams.
This is consistent with the experience at Canadian schools, says Harold Reiter, chair of admissions at McMaster, but that doesn’t detract from the generally high performance of the non-science students, he said. “Once they have caught up, they do every bit as well as their science-background peers.”
New flu on campus
What your doctor didn’t learn in med school
Writing the MCAT? You will be fingerprinted
Privacy commissioner in court over collection of med-school applicants’ fingerprints
Planning on writing the MCAT? You’ll need more than government-issue photo ID to get past security. Entrance tests for many professional programs actually require a digital print of a student’s finger, thumb, or palm.
A couple of months ago I posted about grad-school tests ramping up security. Now according to an article from the Ottawa Citizen, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has been accused of violating the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), the Canadian law that governs electronic personal information. Last week, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart launched legal action in Federal Court.
When students enter the testing rooms they’re fingerprinted and digitally photographed. The data is retained for 10 years in a warehouse located in the U.S, which means stateside authorities could access the photos and fingerprints of Canadian students.
The AAMC agreed to make changes after the privacy commissioner found the MCAT’s finger-printing policy to be a violation of Canadian law. However, the court application states that they haven’t stopped collecting fingerprints.
The AAMC wants to be able to verify the identity of students who write the MCAT, but Stoddart is asking them to develop an alternative procedure–something that doesn’t involve collecting the fingerprints of Canadian students.
A similar investigation concerning the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) was launched by Stoddart’s office two years ago, with the Law School Admission Council ultimately replacing thumbprints with photographs.
-photo courtesy of blvesboy
The first signs of a coming health care crisis
Why can’t our newest and best educated cardiac surgeons get jobs?
Sebastien Trop knew from his second year of medical school that he wanted to be a heart surgeon. A star student, he went through university and medical school on full scholarships, and landed a highly competitive residency spot at McGill University. The one thing he didn’t consider during his 12-hour marathons in the O.R., the 90-hour workweeks, the years of study, was that at the end of it all, he wouldn’t have a job. “It’s a lot to ask your spouse,” says Trop, who finished training to be a cardiac surgeon in 2007. “At the end of all this sacrifice to tell her: ‘You know what? I need to take every little job that comes my way because I don’t know if, in a couple of months time, I’ll have something to put bread on the table.’ ”
Trop has cobbled together a living out of a collection of part-time jobs at three Toronto hospitals. Like most newly trained cardiac surgeons in Canada, his resumé is stacked with additional qualifications; he has a Ph.D. in experimental medicine and immunology, and a specialty in critical care. He currently works as an ICU doctor, does lab research and clinical work, and assists on cardiac surgeries. A father of three, he knows he’s treading water at a huge financial cost. So far, Trop estimates he’s at “over half a million dollars in potential revenues lost from not being able to land the job I was trained for.”
His situation is far from unique. The hiring landscape for today’s new heart surgeons is dismal, with one in five failing to find full-time work. It’s a problem that may soon affect the public, as the current employment situation discourages today’s medical students from joining the profession. “It seems paradoxical but a lack of jobs for new surgeons today may lead to a shortage of heart surgeons in the future,” says Maral Ouzounian, a cardiac surgery resident at Dalhousie University and lead author of one of two groundbreaking papers due to be published this week in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Until 2006, Canadian cardiac surgery residency programs—which require six years of training after medical school, usually followed by fellowships—were full. In 2009, 55 per cent of spots stayed empty. If that continues, Canada’s cardiac surgical workforce could be cut in half in 20 years.
Last year, Ouzounian and her collaborators surveyed new cardiac surgeons about their experiences finding work. “Traditionally, heart surgery was a very competitive specialty that attracted the cream of the crop. But the best and brightest med students won’t apply to train for 10 years with the possibility of no job at the end,” Ouzounian says.
So why are today’s job prospects so grim? Technology is partly to blame, as coronary artery stents have offered a less invasive alternative to bypass surgery. But analysis suggests this reduction will be more than offset by the impact of an aging population—we just haven’t seen it yet.
There is another factor, which proves a little touchier. In much of Canada, surgeons are paid on a “fee-for-service” basis, a system that actually creates a financial incentive not to hire. “If you are in a heart centre that does a thousand heart surgeries a year, and you have five people doing those surgeries, each person gets one fifth of the fees associated with those thousand cases,” explains Christopher Feindel, senior cardiac surgeon at Toronto General Hospital. “If you add two more surgeons, it’s the same fees coming in, but more surgeons, which means everyone gets less. There’s a certain disincentive to taking on new people.”
The fee-for-service structure worked well in the past when there weren’t enough surgeons to meet demand, notes Feindel, who was the principal investigator on both papers. “It’s a very efficient way to get people to work very hard when there’s a definite need.” But in a recessionary environment, in which older surgeons may be tempted to retire later and work more, the benefits are less obvious.
Alberta needs more family doctors
U of C might have the solution
The University of Calgary has found a way to bring more family doctors into Alberta.
According to an article from the Calgary Herald, Alberta needs hundreds of family physicians in both urban and rural areas. With an estimated 200,000 Calgarians without a family doctor, the city needs at least 150 new doctors, along with another 150 rural doctors.
It’s sort of a doctor shortage within a doctor shortage: we need more doctors, but we especially need more family physicians.
In the past, there weren’t nearly enough family doctors coming out of the U of C. In 2007, the department of family medicine accounted for 18 per cent of the school’s total graduating class, much lower than the national average of 33 per cent. At the time, the U of C held the second-lowest rate in the country. “The only school that had fewer students choosing family medicine was McGill (University in Montreal),” said Cathy MacLean, the head of family medicine at the U of C, in an interview with the Herald. MacLean said it was an alarming situation, considering the fact that the U of C’s medical school was founded to train more family doctors.
Fortunately, things are changing. This year, 24 per cent of the U of C’s medical graduates are on the way to becoming family physicians.
The article from the Herald describes some of the changes that lead to this turnaround. Dr. John Keegan was hired as undergraduate director of family medicine to promote and oversee the program, and the clerkship for family medicine was increased to six weeks (it was originally four). The department hopes this extended hands-on experience will translate into an increased interest in family medicine, as students gain more exposure to the field. Additionally, the department increased the number of family doctor teachers.
Despite the extra family doctors on the way, there’s still room for improvement. “We have a large number of people in the Calgary area without family physicians,” Dr. Valerie Congdon, AHS’s acting head of family medicine and the head of rural medicine for the Calgary zone, told the Herald.
The U of C is on the right track, but officials want even more students to choose family medicine. They hope that by 2013, half of all graduating medical students will become family doctors.
More med school news:
McGill eliminates MCAT requirements
If not MCAT, why LSAT?
Why are Canadian law schools so wedded to a standardized test that has nothing to do with the law?
Last week all the scuttlebutt was about medical schools that are removing the MCAT as an admission requirement. Right here at home, McGill just axed the standardized test as a mandatory part of an application.
I’ve never written the MCAT, but from my understanding, it does, in fact, test things that one would probably need to know for medical school, like biological sciences. I know I like my doctor to know about biological sciences, personally.
So if medical schools are starting to ease up on requirements for a standardized test that appears to at least have some relevance to the future subject matter at hand, why are Canadian law schools so wedded to a standardized test that has nothing to do with the law? All of the English common law schools in the country have it as a mandatory requirement, and while the LSAT isn’t mandatory for the French schools, some do require applicants to disclose their score if the test was written and many use it as a factor in admissions.
Can anyone present a really strong argument for it as a requirement? I do see the value for admissions officers, to be sure. Potential law students come from literally every corner of the undergraduate academic world, and the LSAT is a ready-made, tried-and-tested way of assigning those thousands of people, with their varied backgrounds, a standard by which to judge them against one another.
But the trick comes, as always, with the word “standardized.” The LSAT is not immune to problems that come along with all such tests, like predictive abilities for law school performance that are mediocre and apparent bias against certain ethnic groups.
Yet it’s well-known among law school applicants that many Canadian schools sort their applications into piles by LSAT score and simply axe off those below a certain percentile. How many brilliant future lawyers are lost below that line, who, for one reason or another, simply can’t handle the LSAT?
It seems to me that there’s some room here for a Canadian law school to set itself apart by announcing a new, more holistic approach to admissions by waiving the LSAT requirement and perhaps doing something like having admissions interviews, which no Canadian law school does, instead, on top of using references and personal statements and extra-curriculars and undergraduate performance. If not for a whole entering class, then perhaps schools could set aside a certain portion of first-year seats for applicants that do not require the LSAT, like the University of Michigan law school did in 2008.
Is there anything about the LSAT that makes it sacrosanct?
Does the MCAT discriminate against francophones?
No French equivalent exists, and translating the exam is ‘too complicated’
Related news:
Original story from the Montreal Gazette
Also see:
McGill eliminates MCAT requirement
Claims the exam creates unequal access for Francophone applicants
McGill’s Faculty of Medicine has announced that the MCAT will no longer be a requirement for Canadian applicants.
Many med schools across Canada claim to treat every undergraduate degree equally. For these schools, the context of your GPA supposedly doesn’t matter: a 3.8 in Health Sciences, Philosophy or Social Work are all equivalent.
Some schools hedge their bets, encouraging students from a variety of backgrounds to apply, while noting that “the difficulty of the program” is taken into consideration.
The whole ‘every undergraduate degree is born equal’ policy is somewhat misleading. In addition to some schools having science prerequisites (including organic chemistry and biology courses), the MCAT has always been an Arts Degree Killer. The majority of Canadian med schools (11 out of 17) and almost every school in the U.S. require the MCAT, a multiple choice exam that assesses “problem-solving, critical thinking, writing skills and knowledge of science concepts.”
A degree in a traditional pre-med program, such as the Health Sciences or Biomedical Sciences, prepares students for the exam (and usually fulfills the prerequisite course requirement for most med schools).
Getting through the Verbal Reasoning and Writing Sample might not require any advanced scientific knowledge, but the physical sciences and biological sciences sections can pose a serious barrier to arts students with dreams of med school.
Fortunately for non-traditional pre-med students, the MCAT is becoming a thing of the past.
Applicants from Canadian universities are no longer required to write the exam.
“I feel what we’ve put in place is very acceptable and will allow us to properly evaluate candidates,” Dr. Saleem Razack, assistant dean of admissions for medicine at McGill, said in an interview with the Montreal Gazette. Dr. Razack says McGill would have kept the MCAT requirement if there was a French equivalent. “But we want to make sure there’s no barrier for a major segment of our population.” According to Razack, the regular med school class from undergraduate programs doesn’t have as many francophones as McGill would like.
The Northern Ontario School of Medicine, the University of Ottawa, and Francophone medical schools in Quebec don’t require the MCAT. After meeting with MCAT representatives about translating the exam- but ultimately finding it was “too complicated”- McGill is joining their ranks (some schools that require the exam actually make certain qualifications- such as McMaster University, which only uses the Verbal Reasoning section to determine interview eligibility and admission rank).
Interestingly enough, if you check out McGill’s Faculty of Medicine website, you’ll note that candidates who are not required to write the MCAT can still submit their scores, and the overall score will be evaluated by the Admissions Committee.
Related: McGill wants ‘non-traditional’ students
-photo courtesy of comedy nose
McGill wants ‘non-traditional’ medical students
Three spots reserved for students who had different paths to medical school
McGill hopes to attract “non-traditional” students to medicine through a new admissions program aimed at diversifying the faculty. Beginning in 2011, three spots out of 80 will be reserved for students who have been on a less than straight path to medical school.
“What’s different about this is that we are looking for people who interrupted their studies, which means that either they’ve been in the workforce, or raised a family,” said Saleem Razack, assistant dean for admissions for medicine at McGill. Traditional students who follow a more linear path to medical school are more likely to come from higher economic means, the dean added. “This [program] may help with the goal of having greater socioeconomic diversity in the profession.” According to Razack the program could also assist in addressing Quebec’s family doctor shortage because mature students are more likely to enter “generalist practices.”
The Quebec Federation of General Practitioners estimates that 2 million Quebecers do not have a family doctor.
The academic prerequisites will remain the same for students applying through the “non-traditional pathways” program, with the exception that the students will be eligible to apply even if they completed their undergraduate studies part-time. Regular students are required to earn their first degree through full-time study. Where admission criteria will differ will be with greater weight given to “life experience” such as working in a community focused environment or a health-related field.
When asked if the faculty had outlined a policy on how the criteria would be weighted differently, Razack said he could not disclose that information. “I’m not able to say that at this point. It’s usually stuff that we keep to ourselves,” he said.
Hey doctors, please stay
Sask to help medical school grads pay down loans
Saskatchewan needs doctors. The province announced yesterday that it would be providing $450,000 to help medical residents with their student loans.
The province’s funding covers interest on student loans for medical residents over an eighteen month period, while government looks into longer-term strategies to ensure medical residents are assisted while completing their residencies.
“Keeping Saskatchewan-trained medical residents working in the province is a top priority of this government,” McMorris said. “As part of our ongoing retention and recruitment efforts, we are pleased to assist medical residents during their residencies. We can be proud that Saskatchewan is leading the way among the provinces by offering this short-term funding.”
“Our top priority is Saskatchewan’s post-secondary students,” Minister of Advanced Education, Employment and Immigration Rob Norris said. “I’m pleased that we have been able to develop a solution to meet the Federal legislative requirements of the student loan program while supporting Saskatchewan’s objectives regarding the recruitment and retention of physicians.”
“Postponing repayment will allow residents to continue to lay down roots in the province that they will hopefully one day practise within,” Vice President of the Professional Association of Interns and Residents of Saskatchewan Sue Sidhu said. “We are all extremely grateful that the province has taken action so quickly.”
I’m not really sure what to make of this announcement. Doctors need financial aid? Then again, the life of a resident can be miserable. Its not just the long hours, but the pay. To be sure, full fledged doctors aren’t exactly starving, and should be more than capable of handling their loans, even if they are brushing up against, and sometimes exceeding, $100,000. But for the first few years after graduation, when they are doing their residency, med-school grads earn salaries closer to those with arts degrees. In Saskatchewan the starting wage is around $47,000/year. So after spending eight intense years in university training for one of the most in-demand professions, med school grads can expect the same, or similar, salary as the sociology student who spent three years taking multiple choice exams and who probably has loan payments a third the size.
So there is a credible argument for loan payments to be reduced. But postponing repayment, as residents are still earning a salary, might be too generous.
What is more aggravating is the fact that provincial governments so often market what is essentially a bribe to keep doctors, or anyone of any use, within its borders as a student aid program. Any tuition rebate scheme falls into this category. Presumably the province is having difficulty keeping doctors from leaving after they complete their training. What’s to stop them from leaving anyway? If Saskatchewan is losing doctors to better paying jurisdictions, the province could always raise the rates doctors are paid per appointment. But, then the government would no longer be helping young debt addled grads, but established doctors who will already be earning an upper level income. Alternately, doctors could be fitted with ankle bracelets to keep them from fleeing to Alberta.
Getting into med school just got a little harder
Fewer med school seats = fewer doctors
Thinking about applying to med school in Canada? Your chances just got a little worse. This fall, fewer spots will be open to medical students at the Universities of Alberta and Calgary. Last month, there was talk about possibly losing 50 spots out of the planned 190 at uAlberta’s med school and 40 out of the 180 at uCalgary.
Canada needs more doctors, and losing med school spots won’t exactly help the situation. However, due to budget cuts, uCalgary and uAlberta might not have a choice. Rithesh Ram, a second-year med student and president of the Calgary Medical Students’ Association, along with 100 other med students, signed a petition asking for more provincial funding. “We have a decreased physician workforce as it is. And it will continue to worsen. It’s a national problem, but it’s even worse in Alberta,” Ram said in an interview with the Calgary Herald.
According to an article from the Edmonton Journal, Advanced Education and Technology Minister Doug Horner said the universities wouldn’t be allowed to cut seats without his permission. “In order for them to pull back on the number of positions we’ve already paid for, they’d have to get our approval,” he said, claiming that it’s “premature” to talk about cutting seats.
A month later, things are looking a little better. With additional funding from the province, fewer seats will be cut from both schools, with uAlberta accepting 167 students compared to last September’s 188, and uCalgary accepting 170 compared to last year’s 180. “So we’re not quite what we were last year, but we’re pretty close,” said Dr. Tom Feasby, dean of uCalgary’s faculty of medicine, in the Calgary Herald.
Of course, it’s still a step in the wrong direction. Cutting 31 med school seats means 31 less future doctors.
Oops! we didn’t really mean to cut $2.5 million
Dalhousie’s medical school lost funding over a government clerical error
Dalhousie’s medical school has lost $2.5 million in provincial funding, an error the Nova Scotia health minister said likely stems from “poor paperwork,” the CBC reported.
After the provincial budget omitted the funding in April, school officials warned loss of licensing to train doctors. “It’s extraordinarily complex and all of the paperwork wasn’t necessarily done in the manner that maybe it should have been done on the part of government,” Health Minister Maureen MacDonald told the CBC. Exactly when the funding will be restored, and by how much, is still yet to be determined, MacDonald told the Chronicle Herald. “We haven’t finalized all of the details and I don’t want to discuss those until they are finally resolved,” she said.
The school, which would be losing eight per cent of is budget, is already on a two-year probation after the Liaison Committee for Medical Education review of curriculum management, monitoring and evaluation turned up 17 non-compliant standards. Dalhousie president Tom Traves told CBC the confusion stems from responsibility for funding delegated between the Health and Education ministries, but MacDonald said they’re working with the school to right the situation.
Dalhousie’s is the only medical institution in the three Maritime provinces.
Major changes to Canadian med schools
In response to society’s “evolving needs”
Medical schools across Canada are making drastic changes to their teaching philosophy, according to a 48-page report just released by the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada.
The Future of Medical Education in Canada project outlines 10 recommendations for undergraduate medical education in response to “society’s evolving needs.”
According to a press release from the AFMC, the report is the first comprehensive study of the Canadian system of medical education in the last 100 years.
That’s not to say Canadian medicine hasn’t evolved and improved over the past century. Image-guided and robotic surgery weren’t exactly standard procedure in 1910. But as Dr. Nick Busing, President and CEO of the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, mentions in the press release:
“This is a watershed moment for medical education in Canada. The recommendations contained in this report are forward-thinking, ambitious, and broad-based; their implementation on a national scale will have a definite impact on how physicians are trained and how care is delivered in this country.”
The recommendations outlined in the report include an emphasis on community medicine, as well as promoting generalism, such as “comprehensive family medicine.” The report also includes five ‘enabling’ recommendations, which are supposed to “facilitate the implementation” of the 10 FMEC recommendations. Dr. James Rourke, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Chair of the Board of Directors of AFMC, notes that the report has received “unanimous approval” from Canada’s faculties of medicine.
-photo courtesy of ernstl
Why you might not get into med school
Government caps set limits on seats
Hoping to get into med school? Great marks, tons of unique extracurricular experience, volunteer work, and high MCAT scores aren’t necessarily enough.
I recently read an article in the Globe and Mail (I happen to know the writer) that gave an overview of the whole application process. For med school hopefuls like me, it didn’t paint a very optimistic picture for Canadians. According to the article, due to government caps on med school seats, only a fraction of the qualified applicants to Canadian med schools are actually getting in.
If you were unlucky enough to be born in Ontario, your chances of getting in are the lowest in the country. The article mentions that in 2009, there were almost 5,000 qualified applicants to the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, with only 194 accepted. Given the fact that Ontario has more med school applicants than any other province, there’s a disproportionately low number of seats in the province’s med schools. In-province applicants to the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Medicine, class of 2013, had about a 33% success rate, with 295 applicants and 98 students enrolled. The success rate for Ontario applicants to the Northern Ontario School of Medicine? Only 4.3%, with 1,845 applicants and 64 seats in 2006/2007.
It’s not much better anywhere else in Ontario. Applicants to the School of Medicine at Queen’s University had an 8% in-province success rate in 2006/2007, and applicants to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto had an 11.4% in-province success rate. As the article from the Globe and Mail points out, it’s the opposite of what you’d expect: Ontario has more med schools than any other province. But it has the lowest applicant success rate in the country, at 19%. Keep in mind, these are all excellent applicants, with high GPA’s and the qualifications each med school demands as a minimum to even apply.
It’s a little scary. For students working towards med school, the course of your future is riding on that application. But regardless of how hard you work to earn and maintain a high GPA, volunteer countless hours towards a worthy cause, and want to have a career one day in medicine, at this stage, so much is beyond your control.
Well, unless you move to Grenada. Or Manitoba.
-photo courtesy of salimfadhley
Rejects ‘r us
One student’s story about not getting into his dream program
Microscopes. Lab coats. Dead bodies. What’s not to love? Yes, I’m talking about the perfect pre-med program—in this case, health sciences at McMaster University.
In my last year of high school, when filling out university applications, health sciences at McMaster seemed like a perfect fit. I knew that after my undergraduate degree, I wanted to study medicine, and McMaster’s program has all the prerequisites built in. It gives students lab experience, and it’s focused on biology, my favourite subject area.
The more I read about the program, the more I wanted in. Health sciences at McMaster was my first-choice program. But I knew the odds. A minimum 90 per cent average is required for consideration, but in order to be competitive you need to be in the low 90s at the very least.
Med schools across Canada claim they’ll consider any undergraduate degree—meaning, it doesn’t matter if you have a degree in biology, anthropology, engineering or drama. It’s your GPA that really counts. Most med schools still have prerequisite courses, like organic chemistry, microbiology and physics. You can apply to med school with a music degree, but you still need to have all of those mandatory courses. The beauty of McMaster’s health sciences: after completing the program, you have all the necessary prerequisites to apply to any med school across Canada.
Oh, there’s also the fact that Mac students get to experiment with cadavers. Seriously.
A 90+ average isn’t the only thing you need to get in. There’s also the mandatory supplementary application—essays and personal questions, including a few, well, odd ones. One asks, “What’s one extracurricular activity that’s important to your sense of self and why?” There’s only one thing worse than a meandering, open-ended, self-exploration kind of question like that. And that’s question No. 2: “What is the one question that shouldn’t be asked and why?” (I knew instinctively not to write, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour?”)
Unlike with real estate, when it comes to choosing a university, location isn’t the most important criteria. Sure, it matters. But when I decided health sciences at McMaster was my first-choice program, it wasn’t because it had the most convenient location. After all, I live within 15 minutes of the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier. But health sciences at McMaster was still number one. It was meant to be.
Demand growing for cadavers in med schools
“If you make mistakes, that’s fine. Your patient’s not going to complain.”
Colour-coded denim cloths cover the row upon row of black body bags atop cold metal tables. Blue means a body that eventually will go into a common grave. Tan, the family wants those remains back for burial, eventually.
These are bodies donated to science, awaiting one of the most sensitive rites in becoming a doctor. Before first-year medical students lay their hands on the living, they learn anatomy from the dead. Week after week, for six months, teams of students will file into in a laboratory at Georgetown University to slowly take apart “their” body.
First goes the skin on the back, peeled away from the yellow globs of fat that made up what in life someone may have called love handles. They lay bare the spinal cord and marvel at how its lower roots resemble the tail of a horse.
Carefully probing a lump inside one chest, a team unearths what at first looks like a metal button — a port through which this man once received chemotherapy. The room quiets as students unwrap the protective covering over each hand. One torso, they quickly learn, looks pretty much like another. But a hand is unique, somehow more intimate, as they hold it with their own blue-gloved hands. Many of the women’s nails still bear polish. One year, shockingly, students found a wedding ring.
“You will be working with somebody’s grandmother, father or wife,” Dr. Carlos Suarez-Quian tells his 200 students before they unzip those body bags for the first time. They’re beginning a balancing act: How to steel their emotions so they can help people, without losing their compassion. Dissecting cadavers is an evolving tradition. No, sophisticated simulators and the plastic-infused organs of museum exhibits can’t replace seeing and touching and lifting real bodies. In fact, demand is growing for whole-body donations.
What’s changing is how they’re used. Nearly one-third of medical schools have begun integrating nuts-and-bolts anatomy with clinical training spaced throughout their first year. That means Georgetown students dissect the heart, for example, the same week they begin learning how to tell the “lub-DUB” of a healthy heartbeat from the “lub-SHOOP” of a blocked valve.
“There’s a very big difference between talking about chromosomes and having your knife in fat,” says student Sarah Buchman of Bethesda, Md., as she eases through fat that, yes, looks like the squishy goo encountered on raw chicken.
Dalhousie loses accreditation appeal, medical school on two years’ probation
International committee reviewed school on 132 standards, was deemed “not-compliant”‘ on 17.
Dalhousie University says it has lost an appeal that places its undergraduate medical education program on two years’ probation.
The Halifax medical school had appealed a preliminary finding by the Liaison Committee for Medical Education, an international accrediting body based in the United States. The school said Wednesday that the appeal was heard last Thursday in Chicago.
Despite its probationary status, which begins Thursday, Dalhousie said its undergraduate medical program remains accredited and it does not affect the ability of students to qualify as doctors or obtain residency training.
Dalhousie has said the board reviewed the school on 132 standards earlier this year, and it was deemed “not-compliant”‘ on 17.
The school says most of the issues identified by the committee following a routine review related to curriculum management, monitoring and evaluation.
The school’s dean, Tom Marrie, said the university has started to improve the areas where problems were found. “We’re continuing our remediation efforts,” he said in a news release. “We expect this task to be accomplished quickly.”
There are 17 accredited faculties of medicine across Canada.
Marrie said the probationary period has no impact on Dalhousie University’s plans for an accredited medical program that is slated to start next September in New Brunswick. “To achieve our goal of having North America’s best undergraduate medical education program, we have begun the task of renewing our present curriculum,” he said.
“Good progress is being made and I expect us to be in a position in September 2010 to implement, here and in New Brunswick, the first year of this innovative new curriculum. We expect we’ll exceed current LCME standards.”
- The Canadian Press
Dalhousie’s MD program threatened with two-year probation
Accreditation body flags “issues” with curriculum monitoring and evaluation
The accreditation of Dalhousie University’s undergraduate medical education program is being threatened with a two-year probation.
The Halifax medical school says it’s appealing a preliminary finding by the Liaison Committee for Medical Education, an international accrediting body based in the United States.
In a news release, Dalhousie says the issues identified by the committee following a routine review of the school relate mostly to curriculum management, monitoring and evaluation.
The school says its MD program remains fully accredited in the meantime.
The accrediting body is expected to make its final ruling based on Dalhousie’s appeal in October or November.
Should Dalhousie be unsuccessful in its appeal, the medical school will have 24 months to make the changes outlined by the committee, which accredits MD programs in Canada in co-operation with the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools.
- The Canadian Press
