Its really been hitting me recently that I'm now half way through 4th year. We are now clearly on the downhill portion of my medical school journey. But it also means less time to get those required experiences checked off my list.
My post-grad group has been very popular especially lately. I've managed to secure some great speakers to run info-sessions on getting into various English speaking residencies and inspired one member to start a spin-off group for those who want to pursue residency in German.
But I've also been attending some of these sessions too, because I also have a lot to learn and recently a friend of mine did one on the USA. He really reinforced how much the average med student as accomplished before even getting accepted into medical school and how these are the people we are competing with for residency. I mean, it's not that different in Canada.
And as much as I'd love to be able to say "HEY! I graduated med school with three kids!" its really not going to be enough. I need to push myself to do more, to improve my CV and overall experiences.
I've started to work on a research paper on the attitudes of medical students in Poland towards abortion. I found a great mentor to help me, but I'm still waiting for approval from our school's ethics committee. I heard they can take ages though so I thought I'd just start doing the analysis and write up of the report. My mentor suggested that I present it as an abstract at a medical student conference coming up in May so I want to try and finish my preliminary work for it in the next few weeks to meet the deadline.
Next my husband suggested that since I've received both doses of the covid vaccine already, that I volunteer at some local clinics. I've called two of them already and have received a very positive response and will hear back soon as to when etc they need me. I told them I'm willing to help out in any fashion. To be honest, I have been feeling a bit guilty, for lack of a better word, that I was able to get the vaccine so early. I think its a bit crazy for us med students to get it, when most of our courses are online. And also a bit pointless - I contacted the IM department at my university to see if I can finally complete my mandatory IM summer practice that I was supposed to do last summer, and was still told I can't because of COVID, because they still don't know if we can transmit the virus to others Sigh. So I'm just sitting at home, with all my classes on MS Teams for the next few weeks. When I mentioned this to my husband he told me to try locally instead. And that way I can both be useful, close to home and potentially include it in my CV, even if it won't count towards my practical experience requirement.
So thats my plan for now. That and reaching out to all my contacts to see what I can do to maximize my chances of landing a Canadian residency. I have a call with the son of a good friend of my dad's who is a family doctor in BC. He already mentioned he talked to his program director about me and will tell me everything he knows.
I'm really hoping that I'm able to do an elective rotation somewhere in Canada this September. From my talks with other IMGs this seems to be one of the main keys to having a shot. And the more I can do, the better. Especially if I can score a strong letter of recommendation out of it. And fingers crossed my vaccinated status will allow me to skip the quarantine so I can maximize my time doing rotations and hopefully, see my parents and sisters finally! Its now been 1.5 YEARS since I saw them last.
Another thing I want to do is subscribe to a question bank for the first part of the Canadian medical licensing exam. One tip I learned, that makes sense, is to start doing the questions NOW, even though I won't be writing the exam for like a year and a half. The guy recommending this said that it will just make me that much more familiar with the style of questions and the patterns - so even if I don't KNOW that topic yet, it will prepare me much better than simply studying the content.
So that's me for now. Lots to do.
