Jump to content
Premed 101 Forums

Irish vs Caribbean medical schools


Recommended Posts

I think it's one of those proposals that sounds appealing before you go through medical school and realize that early performance in medical school has as much bearing on your later clinical acumen as excelling in undergraduate organic chemistry or physics. It's one of the reasons that many North American medical schools don't even bother giving students catagorical or numerical grades at all.

 

There are no good metrics with which to weed out less capable prospective doctors. I don't think it makes any difference if the weeding out occurs during undergrad, medical school admissions or during medical school. the selection is always unfair and emphasizes process over outcome.

 

The essential problem of effectively predicting which student will make a better doctor out of a pool of applicants is ubiquitous at every selection point. The selection processes we use are usually considered valid if they create catagories by which applicants can be differentiated. They don't by necessity or practice need to select good applicants as there is no emphasis placed internal controls to ensure good resource allocation on any substantive scale.

 

The selection proccess is much easier if it doesn't need to revisit past decisions. 'We have an excellent class' is much easier than 'we can prove we selected the best group if candidates from all possible groups'. And remember this is not a proccess that receives anything close to adequate resources to make these decisions let alone research them.

 

And the problem is again the selection criteria. Wrote knowledge is increasingly irrelevant to the practice of medicine. We have smart phones for that. Critical thinking, team work, management, empathy, communication skills, moral character are much more important and almost impossible to test in any meaningful way.

 

The system is really crappy and denies a lot of people who would make fantastic doctors a chance to become one. I hate it but other than huge trials of alternative admission criteria that follow medical applicants from selection to retirement I can't think of any way to fix it.

 

This. You echo what I've said on here before many times, just more eloquently than I could. The admissions system is far from accurate, but I can't offer a better solution and I don't know if anyone else can, either.

 

In my opinion the US has a fairer system for selecting residents. It's basically a free for all between IMGs and AMGs. In general the AMGs are still going to get ranked higher for all the spots. It's difficult to know whether an IMG's training is of equivalent quality to an American's, even if their board scores and evals and letters look good on paper. So it's understandable that you will rank someone with a known baseline level of competence over an unknown quantity. However in rare circumstances when you have a stellar IMG who has had lots of face-time with local staff and whose skills can be trusted, the program at least has the ability to choose him/her over a lower quality American graduate. And that IMG has the ability to match to a spot they deserve.

 

In Canada this is not the case, and there are definitely compelling reasons to keep it this way that have been mentioned before. However at the end of the day, we want the best trained physicians for our country. In general those are probably going to be CMGs, but on occasion there may be exceptions to that rule.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • Replies 60
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • 1 month later...
  • 2 years later...

good luck dude, (i dont mean that in a condescending way)

 

im a NON Caribbean US medical student, so quite frankly i dont really care..

 

but doing the research for many years, i never found ireland to make any sense (UK yes, not ireland)

 

with only last year electives as your gateway to usa vs core rotations and electives ...id pick the Caribbean

 

-- if you plan on a Canadian gamble (if you read that artciles and many others)-- your chances are very limited and as yrs go on and less and less spots are available

 

ps with 10 students (out of 21) opting "not" to match after 500K in debt for....a research position (that you can theoretically get out of highschool)---

that smells a little funky.

Just out of curiosity, why did you find UK to be a better option than Ireland? I was looking at schools in both countries, and wasn't sure which was better to go to as a Canadian.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just out of curiosity, why did you find UK to be a better option than Ireland? I was looking at schools in both countries, and wasn't sure which was better to go to as a Canadian.

The UK provides a gauranteed back up for doing residency in the UK, as a UK grad.   Ireland does not.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The UK provides a gauranteed back up for doing residency in the UK, as a UK grad.   Ireland does not.  

Ah okay, thanks! That was the one reason I felt the UK was better than Ireland as well!

I was leaning towards Ireland over UK because Ireland has more Canadians than UK (from what I've heard), which might make the process of coming back to Canada/US a bit easier. Do you have any thoughts on this?

 

But before applying to any of the schools abroad, I'm definitely going to re write my MCAT and try for Canada again!. Because I feel that my 8 in VR is holding me back in Canada/US (I had a 12PS/8VR/12BS and 3.92 cGPA, so I feel that a better MCAT will definitely increase my chances for Canada)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

@Turk: Watch out when you're looking at old threads. Most of this conversation was written in 2013 and is out of date.

 

If I were in your position I generally would agree with your plan. Repeat your MCAT and try for Canada. Make are that if you go abroad you go to a place with a strong back-up plan. I agree that right now the UK has the best options if you don't match back.

 

The situation in the US has changed recently such that it's much harder to get a visa for your residency. Educate yourself before taking that risk.

 

Remember, whatever you do the rules can change rapidly. The safest gamble is staying at home.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Turk: Watch out when you're looking at old threads. Most of this conversation was written in 2013 and is out of date.

 

If I were in your position I generally would agree with your plan. Repeat your MCAT and try for Canada. Make are that if you go abroad you go to a place with a strong back-up plan. I agree that right now the UK has the best options if you don't match back.

 

The situation in the US has changed recently such that it's much harder to get a visa for your residency. Educate yourself before taking that risk.

 

Remember, whatever you do the rules can change rapidly. The safest gamble is staying at home.

If one actually goes to a USMD or USDO school, the visa issue is fairly tame and not even close to as bad as IMGs trying to do a US residency.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If one actually goes to a USMD or USDO school, the visa issue is fairly tame and not even close to as bad as IMGs trying to do a US residency.

Purely out of interest, can you elaborate on that?  I'm far from an expert but I thought that the lack of H1b programs and the J-1 Statement of Need problems were the same regardless of the route a Canadian takes to residency.  The problem with the J-1 is something that even CMGs heading down for fellowship moan about a lot (and there's supposed to be an unlimited number of SONs for them).  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Purely out of interest, can you elaborate on that?  I'm far from an expert but I thought that the lack of H1b programs and the J-1 Statement of Need problems were the same regardless of the route a Canadian takes to residency.  The problem with the J-1 is something that even CMGs heading down for fellowship moan about a lot (and there's supposed to be an unlimited number of SONs for them).  

Foreign students(i.e. Canadians) studying at USMD and USDO programs, automatically get an OPTI extension for their F1 student visa they did medical school on. This means, that since they did medical school on US soil, they receive a more or less automatic FI-OPTI visa for PGY1. While on the OPTI visa for PGY1, they can then go ahead and and take STEP 3 while in PGY1 and apply for H1b. Or if not, revert back to the back up option of simply applying for  SON and go for j1 visa.

 

A Canadian Medical Grad or Canadian IMG, does not have this option of F1-OPTI visa. IF they want to do a H1B visa, they would somehow have to get STEP 3 done, BEFORE residency begun(well before), and get all of the paper work and processing done between Match day (march) and July 1st Start date in order to get the H1B. As you can see this is logistically fairly impossible, as you generally can only do STEP 3 after you graduate, its intention anyways is to be done during PGY1, but thats not an absolute. 

 

Generally if a CMG or Canadian IMG wants an H1B, they would have to sit out a year and get all the paperwork sorted. Some Canadian IMGs have been able to pull it off, if they're on an off-cycle graduation, where they graduate in December instead of the Usual April/May/June of most schools in Canada. 

 

For the 2016 Canadian USDO cohort as an example, about half of them got residencies with H1B secured(so going on OPTI-F1 Visa for PGY1 and then the program will take care of the H1B for PGY2 onwards). For some, they chose programs for H1B specifically because they wanted to get onto the greencard pathway, others out of necessity - J1 SON would not sponsor for example the ENT/Plastics residencies, so they had to secure H1B from their programs when interviewing. As well the person who matched Rad Onc at Cleveland Clinic secured H1B, because of the low amount of SONs, wanting to stay in the US, and less hassle dealing with Health Canada.

 

But back to J1, yes for anyone who wants to do residency or fellowship in the US, you have to go through Health Canada and get a SON(Statement of Need) which is having more and more restrictions. Generally speaking J1 is the most popular visa option of hospitals that sponsor internationals, as it is cheap, and relatively easy - whereas H1B is expensive and a tedious process relatively.  

 

Also, as far as I know, the J1 Statement of Need restrictions, apply to ANYONE wanting to do residency in the U.S. - regardless if CMG or IMG or AMG, they all compete in the same pool of LIMITED SON's.  For fellowship it is slightly different, and more complicated.

 

Hope that helps!

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...