MDwannabe02

The best advice I got was to look at the soo scripts on the cfpc website. Once you read enough of those, you get the idea of the ridiculous aspects of “the patient experience” they want you to elicit. The soo is absolutely not about your medical knowledge, and if you approach it that way, you will be very frustrated. Hopefully your program gives you a few practice soos. Definitely do those. Between those and reading the soo scripts, that was more than enough for me. Check out: https://www.cfpc.ca/en/education-professional-development/examinations-and-certification/certification-examination-in-family-medicine/preparing-for-the-certification-examination-in-fam - then scroll down to “Soo scripts library”. There are 27 of them, but looking at 5 or so of them is more than enough. Most of your points come from the ludicrously long social histories, so just get the formula down

I don’t know if there are any ideal programs specifically for this purpose, but I can speak in generalities and from experience (also Ontario). Rural programs will likely give you the best experience in acute care. You can pick up more ER shifts during FM blocks, which is tough to do in urban programs if you’re in FM. That being said, you still have to play the CaRMS game. This comes down to a lot of schmoozing. Your best bet is at your home school, so try to present yourself as well as possible to the staff, PD, APD, etc there. Elective time is helpful too, but you won’t get a ton pre-CaRMS likely, so that’s a bit of a gamble. I did rural FM with all my off-service at the urban centre at my home school I wanted to (and ultimately did) match too. For what it’s worth though, I think it’s a relatively less competitive site (everywhere is competitive though). I did electives in one other in-province school and one OOP school. I applied to every single English speaking PGY3 FM/EM program in Canada and only received an interview at my home school. Thankfully, it was all I needed. Take from this what you will

You can always start part-time with some palliative and see how it goes billing-wise and compare it to the rest of your practice. Then you can weigh the pros and cons financially, personally, professionally, and decide which parts of your practice you want to keep/focus on. Some schools offer a PGY3 in a mox-and-match fashion too, so you can pick up skills in interest areas or areas you feel you need more exposure to before starting independent practice.

This country is dying for family doctors. If you put words in the boxes, you will match somewhere

I am in Ontario, so that's where my experience is from. I do have experience across the spectrum of major academic centres to fly-in First Nations, so there's that. I can't speak to other provinces, but I have worked in MANY places in Ontario from London to Kenora/Manitoba border and many, many places in between. That being said, if you're in Quebec, you'd be in a better position to assess the practice opportunities and culture in your own province. I can only speak to my knowledge and experience of my own.

The more rural you go, the more likely you will be able to do these things. I agree “procedures” is broad and that’s tough to do without the office work and/or rounding that goes along with it. Even surgeons have office days. You can do lots of derm procedures if you like that area (biopsies, cryo, etc). There are joint injections, but that goes along with a rheum/msk assessment and follow up. You can do lots of fun acute stuff in ER, but the reality is, they’re time killers too (the pro is that they are fun and can pay well too). Hospitalists can do LPs, thoras/paras, and more. Anesthesia has a lot of fun procedures, but you’d be working rurally and/or locuming as a GPA Are you planning on doing full-service FM that includes EM and OB? If so, that’s tough in bigger centres. Especially EM, unless you’re near enough to a community site that will allow you to work there without a PGY3 (or you could pursue the PGY3 EM, but like an above post said, it’s ++++competitive). Rurally, you can definitely do all these things, but keep in mind, you will likely be dipping into some work-life balance with the call, shift work, etc. involved in this combo. Keep these interests in mind as you go through residency and keep an eye on the workload - the TRUE workload (admin things needing to be done, inbox management, follow up, etc). You get shielded from a lot of this stuff as a resident, depending on your program/preceptor(s). Ask any preceptors you work with what they’re typical weekly, monthly, yearly schedules look like and make sure you’re ok with that workload. That being said, you can always give things up once you’re in practice. Is your residency program urban or rural? If more urban, try to get some rural time to see what true generalist life can be like. That’s my advice as an outgoing FM PGY2 about to start a PGY3 for a focused practice

I don’t see why it would matter whether you are FM with or without an EM year or having passed the exam with respect to billing codes (at least in Ontario where I am training). Take a look for yourself at ohipcodes.com The only instance that I know of where an FR trained emerg doc will make more is in a “consult” (see H055 vs H065 billing codes from OHIP). The FR doc gets $106.80 per consult vs $81.25 for CCFP (with or without EM probably). Now, I am FM PGY2 starting PGY3 EM in July, but my understanding is these consults tend to only get billed when a family doc sends their patient to the ED with a consult letter in hand and/or faxed over (that’s how they do it in the rural community I’m training in anyway). I doubt this code is enough to make a significant difference in the long run though

I’m a resident in a rural family medicine program (PGY2), but I do many off-service rotations at a regional semi-academic site that I will be doing the EM year at next year. At my rural site (town of ~20,000) there are both EM and non-EM trained docs in the ED. I have seen excellent emerg docs with and without the extra EM training. If you want to work rurally and if a department is in need, they will likely hire you. Your comfort level after 2 years of FM training is highly variable though, so that’s entirely up to you if you want to pursue EM training for that reason (programs are +++competitive though, so for sure no guarantees). I myself wouldn’t feel comfortable, but many do. I also plan to do EM full-time, so I have other reasons to go the +1 way. If you do a bunch of EM and ICU electives, you may feel more ready to do some EM on the side of your family practice. Or just jump right in - I’ve talked to plenty of docs who have done that too

As the title suggests, just curious if there's any cons to ranking a program that didn't invite you for an interview on the (minuscule) off chance a program ranks everyone who applied. Specifically regarding the FM/ES match. Wasn't planning on ranking programs that didn't interview me, but maybe it's worth a shot just to make sure I'm doing every last thing I can to match? Any thoughts here would be much appreciated

Good point. I got a rejection from Winnipeg, but haven't heard anything from Brandon yet

Got a rejection on my CaRMS profile from U of Alberta this morning. Not sure if they’ve sent out acceptances yet. Also heard from NOSMU on Friday

Bummer. Oh well. I'll just wait till I apply for the exam and... give them even more money

Haven't heard anything yet. Think we'll hear on Oct 7 or on an ongoing basis?

Just got an email about renewing my CFPC membership and they want $102 for PGY2. Have had the membership since I was a med student and never really found any benefit, but kept renewing because it was free. Are there any other tangible benefits worth spending 100 bucks on a renewal fee? Right now my plan is not to renew. I have enough continuing education courses coming up I could speed $100 on. Just submitted CaRMS app yesterday and hoping to match to a PGY3 if that makes any difference (but I don’t see how it would).

Thanks! I knew Western had a lot of spots, just wasn’t sure on the likelihood of matching there being an out-of-school applicant even if I was to do an elective there. Definitely high on my list. It’s Block 1 of R2, so I need to pull the trigger on something soon, haha