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If a new Medical School were to magically open up tmrw, what uni/where do you think it should be?


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I think either:

- Yukon University

- Northwest Territories (right in between Yukon and Nunavut, so only admit those in the Territories) (call it "MUTN"--Medical University of The North)

- Kwantalen Polytechnic University (they're building a new hospital so it'd be a nice affiliation tbh)

- A Canadian Armed Forces Medical School with a 5-10 year Return of Service Contract or something (similar to how in the States they have the, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences)

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What do you guys think?

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Victoria is probably the largest population center without a medical school.  BC has 5.1 million people and 288 seats (56 seats/million). Compare that to AB (4.3 mil population and 319 seats, 74 seats/million), Manitoba (112 seats, 1.4 million pop, 81seats/million), Ontario (961 seats, 14.5mil pop, 66 seats/million), and Sask (71 seats/million).

While I do agree that it is a little weird that there is no medical school (or good healthcare infrastructure really) to support the northern territories, there just isn't enough population (the entire territories of nunavut, NWT, and yukon combined have a fraction of the population of Victoria) there to justify it when nearly a 1/5th of people in BC (nearly a million people) don't have access to a family doctor or primary care provider.

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5 minutes ago, zxcccxz said:

Victoria is probably the largest population center without a medical school. For example, AB has a 4.3 mil population and 317 seats between two schools (73 seats/million). Meanwhile BC has 5.1 million people and 288 seats (56 seats/million).

While I do agree that it is a little weird that there is no medical school (or good healthcare infrastructure really) to support the northern territories, there just isn't enough population (the entire territories of nunavut, NWT, and yukon combined have a fraction of the population of Victoria) there to justify it when such a large percentage of people still don't have a family doctor in BC for example.

very true about the North. Although UBC's does have a Medical School Campus in Victoria. Do you think they should be adding another on the Islands? Like in cambell river/courtenay/comox area, or increasing the # of seats in Victoria?

I thought that a way of narrowing the doctor shortage is only allow IMG's to do Family Medicine residencies, but then I remembered that the Carribean Schools would probably lobby otherwise.

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5 minutes ago, zxcccxz said:

Victoria is probably the largest population center without a medical school. For example, AB has a 4.3 mil population and 319 seats between two schools (74 seats/million). Meanwhile BC has 5.1 million people and 288 seats (56 seats/million).

While I do agree that it is a little weird that there is no medical school (or good healthcare infrastructure really) to support the northern territories, there just isn't enough population (the entire territories of nunavut, NWT, and yukon combined have a fraction of the population of Victoria) there to justify it when nearly a 1/5th of people in BC (nearly a million people) don't have access to a family doctor or primary care provider.

Victoria already technically has a medical school - it is a training site for ~525 UBC medical students years 1-4. 

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1 minute ago, frenchpress said:

Victoria already technically has a medical school - it is a training site for ~525 UBC medical students years 1-4. 

That's true. I only meant that it makes more sense to start a medical school at UVic rather than increase seats at UBC (which is already the largest school by #seats in Canada) and fragment the class even further.

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well I mean UVic already hosts the IMP, so it wouldn't make sense of them to open a whole new schools, considering that their IMP site already has 38 seats.

I guess maybe UVic/UBC can introduce a concurrent 3+2 (3 yr med, 2 year fm residency) or a 3+2+1 (3 yr med, 2 year fm residency, 1 year EM fellowship) program to increase Family Medicine or Emergency Doctors??

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Opening a medical school isn't difficult, the difficult part is having the staff logistics to support a certain amount of students during rotations. You need a critical mass of specialists to maintain an adequate clerkship. There really isn't much in the way of untapped hospitals/centres in Canada. And while UVIC could maybe support its own program, it makes more sense logically to use the educational assets in place at UBC already instead of reinventing the wheel. And UBC opens more satellite campuses instead of making its Vancouver one bigger is that Vancouver's sites are saturated.

A more realistic question is where the next satellite campus will open. If you go by then the only population centre in the top 20 is Oshawa, so I predict U of T's next campus will be there, followed by Barrie (21). ;)

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Realistically, schools probably continue to keep adding satellite sites and increase the number of seats accordingly. Ottawa , Queens, and bigger provincial schools could add a rural distributed site or near-rural site. 

That being noted, and forgive me if I'm missing something, but couldn't Toronto support at least one more school? I know that Mac could be considered to be a "almost Toronto" school, but when you have a massive city with only one school (with a already large class size) I'd think Ryerson (which recently added a law school) would be a candidate for starting a new school. 

Now, before anyone talks about new schools seriously they should close the seat:residency gap so the number of unmatched CMGs stops climbing. 

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27 minutes ago, MedicineLCS said:

That being noted, and forgive me if I'm missing something, but couldn't Toronto support at least one more school?

It depends on the clinical sites, and if their saturated, using my own specialty for example, are there enough outpatient pediatricians interested in having medical students rotate through so that everyone can get an adequate exposure? Is there room for more medical students at sick kids so that they still get enough patient exposure and learning opportunities. The same for every specialty. Honestly I do not know the answer to this question. Having students from two different medical schools at the same site would be a logistical nightmare, and I realistically don't see U of T giving up any of its hospitals any time soon. That being said, as above, perhaps Ryerson could start something like an Ontario Community Medical School and do preclerkship in Toronto and have clerkship sites distributed to the GTA suburbs, ie Oshawa and Barrie, where there may be clinical opportunities available, with the caveat that you aren't going to have exposure to tertiary care stuff like transplants or PICU for example.

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13 hours ago, bearded frog said:

Opening a medical school isn't difficult, the difficult part is having the staff logistics to support a certain amount of students during rotations. You need a critical mass of specialists to maintain an adequate clerkship. There really isn't much in the way of untapped hospitals/centres in Canada. And while UVIC could maybe support its own program, it makes more sense logically to use the educational assets in place at UBC already instead of reinventing the wheel. And UBC opens more satellite campuses instead of making its Vancouver one bigger is that Vancouver's sites are saturated.

A more realistic question is where the next satellite campus will open. If you go by then the only population centre in the top 20 is Oshawa, so I predict U of T's next campus will be there, followed by Barrie (21). ;)

Oshawa is affiliated to Queen’s and although it does not have a medical school, there is 5-10 medical students from Queen’s on rotation there at any given time. I doubt UofT would be allowed to open a campus there when everyone is already affiliated to queens. I think part of the family Medicine program is also based out of Oshawa.

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19 hours ago, BigHoss said:

well I mean UVic already hosts the IMP, so it wouldn't make sense of them to open a whole new schools, considering that their IMP site already has 38 seats.

I guess maybe UVic/UBC can introduce a concurrent 3+2 (3 yr med, 2 year fm residency) or a 3+2+1 (3 yr med, 2 year fm residency, 1 year EM fellowship) program to increase Family Medicine or Emergency Doctors??

UBC doesn’t need to do anything to increase the number of family medicine residents coming here - they tend to match every slot in the province on the first match. I feel like the problem isn’t attracting family doctors to train in BC... it’s the province compensating/supporting them in a way that actually makes them want to open a full practice in the places that need them, instead of specializing in other areas of family med, doing walk-in clinics, etc.

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I'd probably guess York University. The GTA is the largest population center in NA to only have 1 medical school and there certainly are a number of hospitals that currently are underutilized while others across the province are packed with medical students. It would be a massive undertaking however, turning community hospitals into teaching hospitals would ruffle a lot of feathers. 

 

Given the general supply of doctors in Canada however, I would probably start it off with 100 students a year and take those positions from the other Ontario schools. 

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