Aetherus

This is a very scary proposal that could really compromise patient care. The problem with the lasers they want to do is that the indications on when to do them and the post op follow up take a whole residency in Ophthalmology to master. The procedures themselves take practice to be proficient at. If they wanted to do surgery, they should have gone to medical school and matched to Ophthalmology. With regards to the dermatology aspect, presumably they will be doing these procedures in the periocular region, similar to Oculoplastics (a subspecialty of Ophthalmology). Again the problem is that they do not have the training to determine if a lesion is cancerous/precancerous and when they should biopsy. This scope creep is truly terrifying for patient care…

This is going to lead to a disaster in CaRMS if they don't add residency positions to match all these new seats they are creating. It's always the same thing, it's much more appealing politically to build a new medical school instead of investing in residency positions. In addition, if they don't address the factors that are making medical students shy away from primary care in the first place, this will just lead to greater competition for speciality positions and exacerbate an already broken system.

It will generally be counted as whatever your preceptors residency was. So for ortho, if you did spine with a neurosurgeon it would be counted as neurosurgery vs if you did spine with orthopaedics it would be counted as orthopaedics.

There are several research fellowships across the country, some of them are set up very formally and others less so. Fellowships I’m aware of: Toronto, Ike Ahmed Ottawa, Kashif Baig Mcmaster Calgary, Fiona Costello I’m sure there are others that are more informal as well. I would say if you go unmatched and are planning on reapplying to ophthalmology, a research fellowship is the best route to boost your chances for the following cycle.

Ophthalmology can be suited to global health missions. Look up Orbis. Lots of eye pathology in the developing world and you can make a real difference by training up the local surgeons while also providing care.

Lots of speculation. I don’t think you absolutely need to do the fellowships to get into Ophtho on round 2. As long as you can show the committee what you have done with your year off, I think you have a change of matching. I know of a few people who matched without doing a research fellowship after going unmatched.

I'm sorry you went unmatched. The match is an imperfect system to distribute a finite resource. With regards to this year being the most competitive year, we will have to wait for the data to be released. As it stands, 2020 was the most competitive year and 2018 was the second most competitive year since they started tracking this. It does seem that the number of applicants alternates with every even year being more competitive. Based on what I have heard, I think it is unlikely this year will match 2020. Unfortunately, there are many people who don't get any interviews for Ophtho every year. In fact, you can generally figure this number out by looking at the difference between people who ranked Ophtho First and the total number of applicants. In terms of the Research Fellowships, I don't doubt they are competitive as there are only a few (Ike Ahmed and Kashif Baig) who have any type of track record. But to say they are more competitive than the Ophtho spots is a gross exaggeration. Unfortunately, several qualified applicants go unmatched for Ophthalmology every year. I think there are many people who are oblivious of how competitive the specialty is, even with everyone telling them. Best of Luck with the research year and hopefully round 2 works out better!

I’m a senior resident in a top 3 competitive program. I would say asking the residents and senior medical students interested in the same specialty is a good starting point. From my experience there are a few different types of mentors you can find through research. It mostly depends on their philosophy. As you have mentioned, certain staff get you to put the effort into the project but don’t let you present or be first author and won’t write you a reference letter. You want to avoid these staff as they are using you as free labour. The second type of staff often has many medical students working for them and run it like a business. You put in work and your remuneration will be a reference letter. It’s somewhat transactional and they aren’t necessarily invested in your success but can help you achieve your goal. Finally the third type of staff is the one who takes you under their wing and cares about your success and gives you opportunities instead of tasks. This is the ultimate staff to work with but also the hardest. Asking around and meeting people is the best way to try to find out who you work well with.

This is not privatization of health care. This is moving certain procedures to private facilities that will be paid by government funds. This is the model in Alberta. Essentially the government allots contracts and are able to better control costs than in the hospital. For example, cataracts don’t need to be done at the hospital. You contract then to a facility that will be paid a fixed amount per surgery they perform. This covers equipment and personnel costs. The surgeon also gets paid the same code as they would in hospital. Importantly the patient does not pay anything. This is changing the delivery model to something more efficient, but it is not private health care. The media is poor at Differentiating and the public is even worse.

If you can are going for an ultra competitive specialty, you are doing a disservice to yourself by not taking your summer to be productive. You don’t have to use the whole summer for research but should at least do some project for networking and CV.

My understanding is that you can do the following: 1. Apply to second Iteration of CARMS for the left over spots. 2. Go through the Military spots 3. Go to the USA to do a second residency (which can sometimes be advantageous from a time perspective because the Family med is considered as your internship and then for many specialties, they are only 3 years total (1 internship and 3 of the residency).

I know of one applicant who got in on the third try to a very competitive specialty in a very competitive location. But I’m general I agree with your sentiment

Most medical students go into family medicine, so saying that most average medical students end up in family medicine is not a wrong statement. Family Medicine is orders of magnitude larger in terms of spots than the small competitive specialities. If we are comparing, we should be looking at proportions and not absolute numbers. Furthermore, there is no easy way to quantify average medical students since all the objective metrics no longer exists. Finally, I will say that on average, Family Medicine is more community oriented and less academically oriented than FRCPC/FRCSC, and so it would be conceivable that academically inclined medical students chose these specialities over Family.

Hard to compare tech between specialities but I can lay out a few really cool things in Ophthalmology and people can decide for themselves: - Bionic Eye (Argus II) (https://secondsight.com/discover-argus/). Pretty much a microchip that is implanted that gives people back their sight. - 3D Screen for operating (https://professional.myalcon.com/vitreoretinal-surgery/visualization/ngenuity-3d-system/) - Surgical Robot (https://www.preceyes.nl) - Intraoperative Optical Coherence Tomography (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31240975/). Allows live time visualization up to a few microns in definition. - So many different types of Lasers (Refractive surgery, Glaucoma, Retina lasers etc). - Cataract Surgery and multifocal lenses. I could keep going but many of the other tech is a bit esoteric but still very interesting.

Depends what type of surgery you are interested in, but Ophthalmology is by far the most tech heavy field in Medicine. Tech is everywhere, both in Surgery and in clinic.