All Posts Tagged With: "Medical schools"

Residents in that province make over $10,000 a year more than their counterparts in Quebec and Newfoundland

If you’re coming out of medical school with a large debt, where you do your residency might make a big difference.

The salaries received by medical residents varies widely across the country and it doesn’t necessarily correspond with the cost of living, for instance, residents in Manitoba can make more than their counterparts in Ontario or British Columbia.

Residency, on the job training for medical specialties, generally ranges from two years, for family medicine, to six years for residents going into more complicated specialties and sub-specialties.

Because residents in every province receive a higher salary each year, the pay gap is even greater in later years.

Currently, residents in Quebec and Saskatchewan are in the process of negotiating new contracts and are seeking higher pay. Residents in Quebec are also seeking an end to the 24-hour shifts that are currently standard across the country. Doctors working these shifts are considered “on-call” but they are required to stay in the hospital for the full 24 hours and, depending on how busy they are, may not have any chance to rest. Residents also work other, shorter, shifts.

Here’s how the pay breaks down across the country:

First Year:

Newfoundland and Labrador — $42,781
Maritimes* — $51,546
Quebec — $41,355
Ontario — $51,065
Manitoba — $51,285
Saskatchewan — $48,436
Alberta — $53,25
British Columbia: $48,565

Maximum salary:

Newfoundland and Labrador — $67,223
Maritimes* — $86,252
Quebec — $64,396
Ontario — $88,188
Manitoba — $86,838
Saskatchewan — $70,225
Alberta — $92,055
British Columbia — $77,758.74

*Dalhousie University, in Halifax, is the only medical school in the Maritimes. Residents are placed at hospitals and other facilities in all three provinces with the same pay scale. Dalhousie also runs a satellite program in New Brunswick.

Source: Medical resident student associations and the Canadian Resident Matching Service

Do you have what it takes to get through the Multiple Mini Interview?

In the late 1990s, medical faculty at McMaster University in Hamilton were growing increasingly frustrated with the interviews used to evaluate medical school applicants. Even the most conscientious interviewers, it seemed, were biased, and there was often no correlation between the interview process and the subsequent performance of students. “The way we were admitting students was approaching being unethical,” explains Jack Rosenfeld, a professor emeritus in pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster. “The interview process was letting in people who should not have gotten in and excluding people who should have.”

So Rosenfeld and his colleagues proposed a radical new system called the Multiple Mini Interview (MMI). Instead of rattling off prepared responses to typical interview questions, applicants would have to work through 10 to 12 eight-minute stations where they’d respond to carefully scripted actors, tackle ethical dilemmas or try to solve hands-on problems—all under the watchful eyes of a group of interviewers.

The MMI was a success: a 2004 study published in the journal Medical Education found that it succeeded in diluting the effects of interviewer bias and provided valuable insights into an applicant’s abilities. A 2007 follow-up study found significant correlations between MMI results and later performance on clinical clerkships and national licensing exams.

Now, five years after McMaster implemented the MMI—in the face of aggressive resistance from the health care establishment—12 of Canada’s 17 medical schools have adopted the practice. In fact, the MMI that McMaster pioneered has spread to universities in England, Australia and New Zealand.

How applicants are judged remains a closely guarded secret. Medical schools provide little information on how to prepare, and at most universities anyone taking the MMI is required to sign a confidentiality agreement. Med schools are serious about keeping the mystery in how the MMI works; one applicant who snuck into a training session for judges (specific questions were not discussed) was banned from applying for seven years.

Happily, Maclean’s is under no such restrictions. We spoke to medical school faculty, successful and unsuccessful applicants, and people who served as MMI judges to find out what happens during the interview process—and what kind of person med schools are looking for.

Next: How to prepare

Gov’t would fund 20 medical students every year for five years, at a cost of $6 million

Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil is promising to offer free tuition to 100 medical school students on the condition they agree to practise as family doctors in under-serviced areas of Nova Scotia. McNeil, campaigning in Halifax for the June 9 election, says a Liberal government would provide tuition for 20 students every year for the next five years, a proposal that would cost more than $6 million to implement.

Under the proposal, doctors taking part in the program would have to be willing to work in under-serviced areas for at least five years.

The Liberal leader says about 50,000 Nova Scotians do not have a doctor.

McNeil says his government would force participants to move to certain areas if none of the participants volunteered to work there.

He says the expectation is that once a doctor is dispatched to an under-serviced area, they will be more likely to stay there once they put down roots in the community.

- The Canadian Press

$3 million for future doctors in Manitoba

The Manitoba government is adding 10 more spaces for future doctors at the University of Manitoba’s medical faculty.

Health Minister Theresa Oswald says $3 million will be spent to increase the number of seats at the school from to 110 from 100 next September.

The government has already added 30 spaces since 1999.

The latest additions are part of the NDP’s campaign promise last year to address a physician shortage and hire an extra 100 doctors over four years.

- with a report from CP.