MD2015:)

Depends where you live. Vancouver can be tricky as pay is about $10K less per year than many other provinces. You used to pay all of your CMPA but now I think it is getting covered. Car insurance and gas is expensive in Vancouver and so is rent of course. Toronto is obviously very expensive too but income is higher and most of your CMPA fees are reimbursed. Other cites/provinces would be easier to manage. LMCC part 1 was $1K, LMCC part 2 is 2-3K (price keeps going up), royal college is about $5K. Tuition during residency is about 500-1000 depending on where you live. LOC interest payments (or other student loans), disability insurance payments payments, potentially car payments depending on if you need a car, etc all add up. Carms is expensive. If you end up doing IM, peds, family plus ER etc you pay for carms twice. Exams like ACLS & ATLS you may have to pay for yourself. You pay for your resident licence. Getting a moonlighting and staff licence are more expensive later. You may pay for electives in other provinces and you have to get a licence for that province plus pay for your travel/living expenses. You get money taken off your income for dues and benefits. You can get a lot of tax money back in the first couple years of residency and you can claim some of the above expenses to lower tax as well.

I agree with Ellorie. I wouldn't include it in your application package because you are not sure of the views of the person/people who will read that aspect of your application. There are a lot of people trying to get into med and so if they feel unsure about you for a certain reason they may be more tempted to say no without hearing your whole story. Congratulations for getting through your addiction and becoming involved in meaningful work to help others as well. Once you are in medicine/residency you may be able to be more forthcoming about your journey as it could be inspiring for many, but wouldn't talk about it now. And yes when you apply for your doctor's licence in residency and to get your independent licence you may be asked to disclose and provide medical documentation on this. For example, in Ontario your licence application asks you if you currently or previously had substance use issues and you have to provide relevant details and medical notes.

Yeah they should give you time to eat lunch. If it seems like they forgot then you could ask if/when it is a good time to grab lunch. It helps to pack your lunch or snacks especially on busier rotations so that it is easier to make sure you get to eat. Often there are rounds (lectures) at lunch time in certain specialties like IM or peds and you can eat then. On surgery you can often eat between OR cases. In ER or OB the staff may not take a break so pack your lunch and ask for a quick break if you are not released by them. In med school and residency I was able to eat lunch about 95% of the time and packing your food helps

Performance on electives in your specialty of choice (along with reference letters from them) is by far the most important feature of your application. You did some research and got a paper done so thats good. It is good to be involved in something extracurricular but probably they will be lenient due to COVID screwing up everybody's plans. I am not sure if this is relevant to you or not (just made inferences from your username and vibe of the post), but extreme anxiety is pretty common with CARMS and the pandemic, but can be really hard to deal with. You could consider reaching out to mentor/counsellor/GP if you find it gets overwhelming or hard to control. Important to ensure you reach out for support to get through this year if you find you are struggling with anxiety that makes it hard to function. Carms sucks lol

It is really unfortunate for all the people starting medical school this year because the virtual format makes it extremely challenging to make friends. I know that probably many many people in your class are feeling isolated as well. Perhaps you could try reaching out to a couple people that you think you might like to study together online or to have zoom fun get togethers or in person distanced get togethers (like meet in a park). If you initiate these hangouts then gradually you may make your social circle despite this virtual challenge. Probably most people are open to making new friends but most people are not really sure how to do it with this new shift to online.

I am in IM fellowship and doing a med ed masters during PGY5 this year. My PGY4 year was much busier clinically and I have a lot of spare time this year. Half of my co-fellows are doing grad school (with a goal of academic jobs with either teaching or research afterwards) since we only have do do 2-3 days a week of clinical time if we do a masters concurrently. I pay for my own tuition but I am only working a few days per week and getting the full PGY5 salary so it is worth it for me. The people I know who did the same masters in the years above me all got academic jobs as clinician teachers/educators.

I dont know how much has changed since I did the exam 5 years ago. When I did the exam peds, ob, surgery, IM, ethics, and psych were all weighted equally. IM and surgery had way more content to learn than the others but were worth the same. Toronto Notes was very helpful. I focused on mastering the chapters for peds, ob, ethics, and psych and spent less time on IM and surgery because they were so broad. I think I scored in the top 5-10% or so with this strategy. I actually ran out of time on part of the exam and left a bunch of questions totally blank and it still worked out ok.

If you feel like learning medicine then anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology might be the most relevant. You could read the sections on the human body/medicine from MCAT prep and maybe pharmacology and genetics. Basic science content from MCAT is not as directly useful. In med school and residency I used a tiny amount of my knowledge of physics, chemistry, biochem, bio but not much and I don't think it would be worth your time to study them.

My friends found derm and optho to be useful. They also found electives in their areas of interest useful (IM for hospitalist, addictions medicine, etc)

I switched from FM to IM because I found out I am a lot more detail oriented than I thought and I wanted the time to be be able to go into depth with clinical cases. I liked acute medicine and complexity a lot more than I thought I would. I didn't like some areas of family medicine (derm, ortho, optho) and so I was happy to not have to see it. There were other areas of FM that were ok but I did not mind going without (peds). I knew that the IM track would be longer and that residency would be tougher so I spoke to a lot of people and did a lot of thinking about the decision. IM residency was tough - tiring and hard. But now I am done it and I am so happy that I had switched programs! If I had to stay in FM then I probably would have done hospitalist and some other stuff and would have found a way to be very happy, but IM ended up being perfect for me.

I did not think about switching from FM to IM I was about 3/4 of the way through first year - I had completed a couple months of IM and also 4 months of FM as well as other subspecialties. I did CTU fairly late in the year and loved it and decided to switch to IM. The people in IM at my hospital (senior, chief resident, attendings, IM site director) spoke to the program director to advocate for me to switch. Once the PD said that the switch may be possible then I met with PGME and had a formal interview with IM and then they let me in. Then I told my FM program. If you already know that you want to switch then I would contact PGME for advice. Not sure what the best timing is to approach the other program. I think halfway through the year once you have a chance to settle into FM would be ideal. If you can do IM rotations in the first half of the year then this would let the IM program have a chance to work with you to see if they would want to take you. The main issue that you may face is that it may be hard or impossible to switch as an IMG. I know several residents who switched residency programs but none of them were IMG. The IMGs that I know of were not allowed to switch.

In the past you could probably do some shadowing but with COVID you might not be able to. Most clerks are not back in the hospitals yet so I doubt shadowing would be easy to come by. Research in your speciality of choice would be a good idea to show interest, learn more about the specialty, and to meet some of the doctors in the program.

Yeah I'd consider doing more undergrad courses if you for sure want to do med school in Canada unless some of the schools will look at 4th year only or heavily weight your masters. wGPA needed for U of T is >3.9. Your experience sounds amazing by the way! Unfortunately marks would have to be probably at least 3.8ish or 3.9 to get past the GPA cutoffs I think

I switched from FM to IM after 1 year and I know several other people who switched programs during residency. I am a CMG. I did not apply to IM in medical school because I did not realize that I liked the specialty then. I found out I liked it during PGY1. I know of some IMGs that tried and they would not let them switch programs - this may depend on the province as there are different types of IMG contracts between provinces. I would ask your PGME office.

I was put on the waitlist several years ago and heard that U of T waitlist does not move much...but I got in and so did my friend! So there is hope -good luck to you all!