Planning....

Last week I attended a presentation on how to pursue a medical residency in the USA. I'm not considering the USA but I wanted to know about the process because the process in Canada is very similar.

And side note, I learned that the process in Canada isn't quite as daunting as I had originally thought. I was under the (mistaken) impression that the return of service requirement would mean that I would be sent to some undesirable place to work off the cost of my residency training. But actually there are just some restrictions as to where I can't work - which in Ontario would be Toronto, the GTA and Ottawa. It means that I could potentially get to go back to my hometown! I mean, I'd still be under requirement to fulfill the 5 year return of service agreement, but I'd have some control over where that would be.

Its changed my whole outlook on residency and my plans. Up to now, the plan had been to gun for the UK. But with Brexit, everything is up in the air and I have no idea how the UK leaving the EU will impact me. It's not urgent because I still have 5 years to go and hopefully things will settle before it's my time to apply. Still, I hate the uncertainty.

Anyway, since learning that there is a chance of coming back to Canada - albeit still very tough as only about 20% of IMGs were successful in matching, in Ontario at least - I'm trying to plan my experience here in a way that would facilitate my chances.

First stop will be meeting up with my former family doctor. In addition to having a practice, he is a part-time professor at McMaster in family medicine and takes students in to his practice all the time to shadow him etc. He also has a TON of contacts in the town where I'd love to do residency in. I'm hoping I'll be able to see him when we visit my family over Christmas.

I'm not getting my hopes up too much but I'm excited that I have some thing to shoot for.

Which leads me back to the presentation on getting to the US. In addition to wanting to know the process for the US because its similar to Canada (academic requirements, match system etc), I also started a Facebook group for students and alumni from my school to help us with the process of applying to English speaking residencies. One thing about my school is that while I believe that we will be prepared with the medical know-how to be able to do residency adequately (and this has been confirmed by multiple successful alumni), they leave us to completely fend for ourselves with the post-grad process. It's alarming how many students are completely unprepared for what comes after medical school and even worse, have no idea. Like they think that the MD they will have will suddenly open all the doors for them, and that's just not the case.

Anyway, I started the group and wanted to go to the presentation so I could report back and share the knowledge. And I learned a lot! One of the things it made me realize is that I need to get my butt on to some meaningful volunteer and extracurricular work and look into getting involved in some research. I had given myself grace for my first year to just focus on passing and making the transition as easy as possible for my family, but now its time to starting thinking about what I need to do to make myself a strong candidate.

Research is something I'd LOVE to get into and one of the women at the presentation gave me some great tips on how to look for opportunities, because its one thing I had no idea about how to go about doing. So today I emailed a teacher of a course I took last year that I enjoyed and asked if there are any opportunities for research with her department.

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In other news, December looks like it will be a fairly stress-less month. I have a pretty important exam from biochemistry and our Ethics final exam but otherwise things are winding down a bit and I have a lot of free time.