Bluberblubo

1. I don't know a single cardiology fellow that hasn't locumed during their fellowship. 2. yes That being said, first get into residency and then decide if you actually will still wanna do cardio. A lot of cardio gunners who started residency changed their minds and many who didn't want cardio ended up liking it. So this isn't something to stress about as an MS3

Lol I would pay anything that the CMPA asks me to. They are the only group whose fees are mandatory AND that would actually provide you with a service that you need and is helpful. Also, their fees are actually not that high if you consider how much work goes into a case and how much lawyer fees are. Of the list of fixed expenses that shikimate posted above, the CMPA is basically the only organization that hasn't in one way or another fucked us. Also if you're in Ontario you can apply for the cmpa rebate and get the vast majority of the fees reimbursed. Your post should actually read "Thank you CMPA for actually reducing the cost for a year for us when there were not as many complaints instead of pocketing the money like every other group or association"

No one here can tell you if you're out of luck or not. You emailed them and are waiting to hear back. Nothing anyone says here will make a difference so your only option is to just sit and wait until they get back to you and hope that they will still offer you an interview.

Not to be annoying but a quick google search brought me to this page https://www.cfpc.ca/en/education-professional-development/examinations-and-certification/cfpc-examinations, which says. I heard it can sometimes take up to 3 months. Find Exam Results (NOTE: exam results are typically posted about 8 weeks following the exam and remain on the CFPC portal for about 3 months. You will receive an email when results are available on the CFPC portal. A hard copy of your results will be mailed to you.)

no

It shouldn't be taken into consideration. Just like being a woman shouldn't be taken into consideration. That being said, what you're asking is irrelevant. Do you want to be a surgeon or not? If you do, then apply for the specialty that you want. If someone on pre-med 101 responds saying that they don't prefer older applicants, are you going to believe them and not shoot your shot and apply? You can't modify your age. If you feel that you're not cut out to be a surgeon because you're in your mid 30s, then that's on you not on the surgical residency selection process. You're the one who has to decide if you still want to apply or not. There will be some people who are in their mid-thirties who apply and get positions and there will be other people who are in their mid 30s and apply and don't get positions. The same is true for people in their late 20s or mid-20s or early 30s...

Internist not a cardiologist, so take this with a grain of salt. But any internist can do stress tests if you're comfortable with it. For echos as a cardiologist you graduate with level 2 echo training so you CAN read normal echos, just need to find a place that is hiring, which I heard from my colleagues can be tough. To read TEEs you need level 3, which is more training. I'm fairly certain that for caths you need some extra training because the job market is tight, but I could be wrong about that...

I googled "rc exam fees internal medicine" and this came up as the first link: https://www.royalcollege.ca/ca/en/credentials-exams/exams-fees.html You have to pay the assessment fee and the exam fee. They are tax-deductible. If you want to prep, most people do the IMR course, which is about $1000 and most IM programs would reimburse you for it: https://internalmedicinereview.ca

Yes, it should be but depends on your program and the program you want to transfer to. I think the minimum time you have to stay in a program before you transfer out is 6 months. I think the best bet is to reach out to the PD of the program you want to transfer into and the PGME office of the program you want to go. Then maybe reach out to your own PGME office and your PD. It should be but given that you are talking about a peds subspecialty program, I'm assuming the program is small so I wouldn't be surprised if the PDs start talking to each other... nothing you can really do about that and it wouldn't be a reason to not go ahead with a transfer if you really feel that it's right for you. That being said, I don't have any personal experiences with switching programs but I do have 3 friends that I know who wanted to change programs (surprisingly the two across provinces succeeded and the one who wanted to transfer within a province did not). They were nova scotia --> Ontario, mannitoba --> Ontario, Ontario --> Ontario (did not succeed) but this is roughly what they told me about the process

It stayed that way for me until June 29th and then on June 30th everything got accepted and I got access to my license online, so don't worry about it!

I'll add that you can also get level rates with OMA as well. It'll be more expensive up front but cheaper in the long run. For RBC they usually only advertise the level rate because their step rate I believe is more expensive than OMA's step rate. It's difficult to decide between the two (assuming you go with OMA) what I did was just calculated at what age the level rate would be cheaper than the step rate in the long run. I vaguely remember that it ended up being at the age of 47 or 51 or something. I then thought about, would I still need disability insurance at that age and my answer was yes I probably would, so even though I initially had the OMA step rate, I switched to their level rate. This is more expensive then if I had just signed up for the level rate, but c'est la vie. Not making the change in my mind would be due to the sunk cost fallacy so I wanted to avoid that lol. In any case, that was my mistake, so hopefully that's a mistake you can potentially avoid depending on your situation. This is the single most important thing. There is a hidden facebook group called "Physician Financial Independence (Canada)". Ask some residents or attendings to see if they can invite you to join it. That's the only way you will be able to get into the group. There is a lot of information in there for physicians, med students, etc. that you can learn from. Maybe sit down one weekend and go through it. It should really be a priority for everyone in medicine to improve your financial literacy because that can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars and significantly improve your burnout and all that badness. Also, it doesn't help that doctors are viewed as easy targets by people in the financial industry because we assume that just because we present treatment options for patients and recommend what we think would be best for them that others would do the same for us when in fact many would pressure you into making decisions that are in their best interest and not yours. In any case, good luck with your disability insurance decision and may you make lots of gold doubloons in your life!

There really isn't a right or wrong choice, you just have to decide what you are most comfortable with and if there is someone you enjoy working it. The only wrong choice in my opinion is choosing to have nothing, unless you are already rich enough to not have to work for the rest of your life in the event that you are disabled. RBC advantages are that you own the policy yourself and no one can change it except you and the cost does not change (unless you decide to increase how much you want to be covered for). OMA is group insurance so there is a chance that the policy can be changed, but for that to occur it is usually voted on by OMA members/insurance board. It's possible that it can be changed in a way to become worse for you, but that would be unlikely to happen in my opinion since the people voting for the change are also doctors and if the policy becomes bad then people will just go with RBC. That being said the OMA insurance was recently sold from one company to another, which was suprising although the policy remained the same. OMA disability insurance is non-profit so in the past if there was a surplus of money they would refund the members the difference. They no longer do that and in fact I believe the cost of the insurance has actually gone slightly up (something that would not happen with the RBC plan as mentioned above). RBC has an army of insurance agents, some of whom are VERY aggressive in trying to get your business (if you come across this, I'm referring to you Mark Levine. Not saying he is a bad person or a bad insurance agent, just that he was overly aggressive). I wasn't a big fan of this. Many RBC insurance agents use the fact that the OMA stopped giving out refunds as a reason to sign up with RBC but that's not an argument in my mind since RBC never gave out refunds in the first place. Although the fact that the premiums never go up would be a plus. RBC is obviously for profit and the insurance agents get a commission based on how much insurance they sell, something to keep in mind when talking to one of them. A lot of agents will also host great events for medical students and residents to get their business. All I'll say is there is such thing as a free lunch. The RBC and OMA premiums are fairly similar last time I checked (couple of years ago), although it is possible that OMA is now more expensive than RBC. In the end the most important thing about getting disability insurance is that if something happens to you and you need to go on disability insurance, you want to get paid. That's basically the bottom line. If you feel whoever you sign up with be it RBC or the OMA can provide that then that's all you need. Anecdotally, I have heard that it is more difficult for people to get paid if they have insurance through RBC than the OMA. Because RBC's goal is to make a profit in the end. If there were several doctors who had OMA disability insurance, filed a claim and weren't getting paid there would be outrage since the OMA is supposed to represent us. That would not necessarily be the case with RBC. This was enough reason for me to go with the OMA even if it might have been slightly more expensive. Also the fact that the OMA refunds have stopped and the rates have gone up, implies to me that they are actually paying out insurance to their members. I'll also end by saying that many doctors don't know much about insurance as well as finances. So keep that in mind when asking your friends. Good luck with your decision! - random doctor on the internet who went with OMA insurance, so take that with a grain of salt

I don't even remember sending them in lol. The carms 2.0 match is nothing like the carms 1 match. It is so much less stressful and much more laid back. When you're at the stage of applying to fellowship you'll basically already be peers with your attendings. At this stage the main things will be your references, your interview, and if you did an elective at that school. Everyone at that stage is basically just looking for someone without red flags and would be a good colleague to have. Just try to be the best resident you can be and don't worry about your iters, which will basically be forgotten as EPAs take over everything

I think so, I did the Step 2 CK on a Wednesday and the MCCQE 1 on the Friday in the same week. I felt they did. I spent 1 month doing Uworld for the Step 2 CK. After the exam I spent all of Thursday reviewing OB and the ethics sections from Toronto notes. That was all the studying I did for both exams. I heard it doesn't but can't confirm since I didn't persue further training in the US. Really depends on your residency. I also had not written the step 1 when I wrote the step 2 and the MCCQE. For what it's worth I went into internal medicine and decided that I really didn't want to or care enough about working or training in the US so I haven't done any of the other steps since

In theory it's a good approach but in practice is doesn't always work out. You can write the USMLE and apply to Canada and the USA but if you do decide that you also agree that if you match in one country that you will be removed from the match in the other. I might be wrong but I believe the USA equivalent of carms has their match earlier than Canada. If that's true then you have to decide, would you rather go unmatched again or potentially match to the USA when you might've matched in Canada that cycle. Whatever you decide, good luck!