Rorzo

Renumeration is quite good in Ontario in general, as noted above definitely moreso in outpatient work where you can take advantage of the weekly rostering fee (closer to $70) and travel visit codes. If you can get on an AFP then all scenarios including inpatient work have very good renumeration but this will require the additional year of training. Outside of the AFP practicing in palliative care is up to your comfort level and whether or not you can find the work - the +1 year can help with those (especially the latter) but it's definitely not necessary. If you just want to manage palliative needs for your own rostered patients then you could quite easily do that with a good elective during residency. Feel free to message me with any specific questions.

Make sure you have a purpose to it. It is typically quite possible to become competent enough in hospitalist work through residency, especially if you focus your electives in being competent in those areas. There's also no shortage of hospitals more than willing to hire hospitalists with no additional training as well. There's really only value in pursuing the additional training if you don't feel comfortable doing hospitalist work solo after graduation or if you want to work in a specific place that requires/prefers it (only places I've heard of were CAMH and one of the acute hospitals in Toronto I can't recall)

Would need a cancer center so I don't think it would be feasible to do it rurally at all unless you had a close connection with one and handled simple outpatient follow ups. In urban settings can certainly be a full time job, expect ~$1000/day outpatient maybe up to 1200 inpatient with no overhead for either and likely opportunities to make more on call. The job is quite different from actual oncology, try some electives to be sure that you'd be comfortable with it if you were initially going for med or rad onc. Typically dealing more with routine follow ups as an outpatient without making significant treatment decisions and managing sequelae of the illness/treatment that lead to admission more than the cancer itself in inpatient with the oncologist still coordinating overall care in the background in both scenarios.

It just says the 2nd one, requesting it early so it can be translated seems valid

As someone writing reference letters, the email from carms tells us the due date and it may not look good if you told them something different

FFS is fee for service - you do something and the government pays you for it, as opposed to being on having fixed income per patient/hour/year. Doing my best not to be flippant - you'll understand why your second question doesn't make too much sense when you get in to medical school. While you're in medical school, your decisions will pretty much only affect which residency you end up in. When you've graduated residency, networking helps but jobs are jobs. Unless you're aiming for an academic position or in a specialty that is truly saturated you'll probably be able change jobs without too much hassle - but that only sets you up with a baseline patient population/care environment/location/support infrastructure. The 99th percentile outliers on the upwards end almost universally get there through the work they put in after they're established at a position, and by then no one cares what they've done earlier in their careers.

I'm a FFS palliative care physician in Ontario. The way billing works here, if you have a fair roster of patients (typically only possible by doing at least some community work) then those numbers are very easily attainable. Full time inpatient work is probably in the 250 range in pure billings, as noted above though if you can get call funding and cover weekends then you can certainly add on a bit (closer to 3-4k/weekend in my experience). This is without overhead though, so still coming out ahead compared to a typical family clinic. I try to be open with students and residents when they're with me, and if you're interested in pursuing a specialty as a career I'd try to at least hint at this during your rotations to at least figure out where these numbers are coming from. Yes there are people just being private about their income, but even when I'm trying to be open what makes this so hard is that in FFS it isn't that a certain specialty= a certain income, you have to understand what services lead to what outcome. I've personally had full time weeks between 2k-13k, and I have colleagues between 125k-800k/year - you can definitely make a fair living in palliative care but you won't have an idea of what you'll really make until you know your exact job.

Look up the program description in carms for whatever you're interested in. I only had in house call for CTU, surgery, and obstetrics ranging from 1 in 4 nights to 1 in 7 but that will change based on programs, sites, and curriculums.

This is going to be a personal thing. There are absolutely some people who get satisfaction out of getting a bloodwork level the patient will never feel in to target range, but for the majority of people those visits are on auto-pilot by midway through residency. I've found that satisfaction in a successful Epley, occipital nerve block, bursitis injection, or trigeminal neuralgia treatment. When I've finally been able to get someone to realize what their actual goals of care are despite specialist and hospital visits going no where. Or when they're going through a thousand tests and interventions and they come to you to make sense of it all. Family is varied and because of that I ended up focusing on palliative. But likewise I have friends who get that feeling with a positive pregnancy test, seeing a newborn in office for the first time, getting athletes back to playing condition, getting an airway in a trauma, cutting out an SCC, counselling patients through a break up, or even jsut getting the right referral after years without an answer. And they're able to have those moments in their typical work weeks where I'm avoiding some of them like the plague. At the end of the day a job is a job, and I think going in to family because you like normal BPs makes as much sense as going in to pediatrics because you like normal growth curves. You're going to have boring day to day stuff wherever you go, you have to find something on top of that to give you satisfaction and I honestly think family offers the greatest variety to do that

A lot of it is choice, I know a lot of people in the 11-1300 range but I also don't know anyone who's committed to more than 4 days a week. Nothing stopping you if you want to go past that, but join one of the first 5 years facebook groups if you want to talk specifics with practicing physicians

Hospitalist! I've seen quite a few schedules where people just sign up for weeks; some do every other week, some do one a month, some do two or 3 months straight and then take a long break. There's also cottage towns with way more residents in the summer that require additional physicians only during that time, and you can also cover medium-long term locums for a few months with no commitment after you're done. This is all from a family perspective though, not sure what you're PGY3 in

At the end of the day when you find a school you're interested in you're going to have to do research about actual clinics to get a realistic idea. My rural clinic was done around 330 because they run out of patients, 30 minutes down the road the rural clinic did OB and ER call and it wasn't unusual to be there from 8-11 every third day. When you're staff there may be pressures depending on where you are but at the end of the day you still get to decide call/hours/commitments and as a consequence decide it for your residents as well. The only general rule I found was that community clinics seemed to be better than academic practice;s but even then I've seen solo practitioners with over 5000 patients and an academic staff who never has less than 2 residents with 900. Take home point is to use that interview day well to get the lay of the land.

I agree with the first response, but specifically St. James is notoriously bad. Their attrition rate looks to be upwards of 70%, even if you're set on a Caribbean school I would at least hold out for the big 4.

Use the people who can best advocate for you. Generally you can impress more in 4th year than 3rd, generally people will know you better over a core rather than an elective, generally family physicians can make a better case for you then specialists. But at the end of the day those are all generalities, if a 3rd year surgery elective preceptor connected with you it's going to be way more effective than a generic paragraph from a random family preceptor in 4th year. It gets suspicious if none of your strongest letters are from family preceptors, but I promise you when someone is reading 30 letters in a row the content matters infinitely more than when or where you met the writer

CMA profiles are terrible for salary. If you're a part of the OMA search "selected billings" on the site for hard data about ohip billings. Keep in mind this doesn't include 3rd party billings, makes no mention of hours worked to achieve that salary, and has self-reported overhead numbers from a separate survey that changes wildly based on setting. For example, family is listed as around 30% overhead which is accurate in most cases, but if you're deciding on a job you have a lot of leeway in what you'll accept. As a family resident I had job offers with 0% overhead in the middle of nowhere and passing 40% for a new clinic starting up in an urban area. Last thing to keep in mind is that each of those numbers represents a person with their own goals. You'll see family as the second lowest median salary, yet of the top 100 billers in Ontario the second most represented specialty was family medicine. I, and a ton of other recent grads, can without question be making more than we are right now, but there's a deliberate choice to value life over evening walk-in and weekend ER shifts. Endocrinology should be fine as long as there are family doctors who consult out at an a1c of 7, but when you look at a job with a limited job market, that doesn't just mean it may take a while to find a job. It could mean that choice between life and work gets made for you when you're competing with 10 other people for one position and the person who covers call and takes all the terrible consults gets the job. Focus on a specialty's fit with your personality and it's job market/flexibility; you won't be starving no matter what you do and there's always going to be opportunities to make more money.

It's also definitely not the same each year. Flights, hotels, application fees etc. are a huge hit as you're trying to match, especially if it's for something competitive

Sorry you're absolutely right - I just checked and what I was thinking of was that you're still responsible for ancillary fees such as health insurance/library. Certainly much less than actual tuition

I don't know an amazing amount as I didn't go through it myself but I can pass along some second hand experiences from friends. It seems like you can decide at any point really - I knew people who decided their career plan would need a 4th year in their first year and people who took an extra year after being unmatched. Subjectively, it does seem that the earlier you do it the better the outcome' that guy who decided early on matched to ophto and all of the people I know who did it after being unmatched ended up in family. The most common seemed to be the middle ground - deciding late that you want a competitive specialty and then taking the extra year and delaying the match to be more competitive. This appears to have been moderately successful, with some of these candidates matching to fairly competitive specialties. There aren't any restrictions I know of, but it isn't a perfect system. You have to pay a fair amount of tuition for that year and you're in a weird insurance limbo where you can't do electives for the entire year (I think it was max 16 weeks but I am certainly not a definitive source). If you do have specific questions I can ask some people who have been through it.

I guess I'll provide a dissenting opinion - I'm a second year resident now and I loved my time at Mac. Caveat being that I can't comment on curriculum changes or if anything else is different since I went there. I was initially interested in a somewhat competitive specialty and while there weren't any summers McMaster clerkship was not typical clerkship. Around the necessary team based learning and professional competency sessions I was able to shadow for 10-20 hours per week, got involved in multiple research projects, and hung out with residents in the specialty at rounds etc. I ended up switching to family in the end based off of those experiences, which aside from MF5 gave me so much free time in pre-clerkship that even without designated breaks I didn't feel close to burn out. And there are people from my class who discovered late in preclerkship or early clerkship that they wanted something competitive and ended up matching to competitive specialties - I can't compare how easy it would have been for them to do it at a 4 year school but it certainly isn't as impossible as it's being made to seem in this thread. That does not mean everything is positive, I do have multiple friends who ended up unmatched, matched to alternate specialties, or who taking a 4th year (which is an option) because they switched focus midway through clerkship. But even if you have an idea of med vs surg there is definitely time to find your niche if you set out to explore from the beginning. To address specific questions: -For public health the unit did a great elective where you could see what the MOH did, do research projects etc. I don't know the specifics but 2 people in our class matched CCFP+PHPM at very competitive (non-mac) programs. I did a lab medicine elective which gave exposure to not only path but med micro and med biochem, definitely not for me but the preceptors were incredibly helpful to anyone showing interest -If you want Derm, Mac is a bad idea. They don't really have a program, just a weird half UofT thing, can be hard to get non-academic exposure. If you want to see something more interesting than AKs and are ok dictating until midnight you can learn a lot at Dr. Lima's clinic though -A car in preclerkship will depend on your goals, I was able to live close to one hospital and bus in to Mac and had no problems without a car until preclerkship -Everyone got bursaries, giant list of additional ones that you could apply to got sent out as well -It seems that non-trad students flourished at MAc moreso than elsewhere. We had veterinarians, lawyers, architects, musicians and eventually everyone came out with a good knowledge base -You have to be self-directed in this program, it is very easy to just coast by. That being said, I recognized my own weaknesses, the school had ample resources to correct them, and I did really well on external electives and continue to do so in residency (I did get lucky with my clerkship stream as well and did almost all of my cores early - those who weren't able to do so felt much more uncomfortable). The individual will matter more than the school here in my opinion, but Mac certainly won't bring a competent student down Lastly the benefits of Mac. If you want something non-competitive you will have zero issues matching from Mac and I really don't see the value of the extra year of training. That will cost you 200k+ of staff money, probably 5 figures of tuition as the 4 year schools tuition inexplicably creep closer to Mac, and a year of living expenses whatever you budget that as. I hated lectures and the minutae that my friends at UofT were being forced to attend and tested on, and I instead got to spend that time researching, getting clinical exposure, and having fun. At the end of the day you have to know yourself because that program is definitely not for everyone, but it was my first choice going in and a couple years out doing residency at a 4 year school I would absolutely not want to go anywhere else in retrospect. Feel free to PM me questions as well, but if you feel comfortable please post them here as conversations like this were incredibly helpful for me when I was making my decision.

It would be crazy to remember everything you've just been through, I'm about to have an independent licence and there's still basic science things that pre-clerks have down better than me. You've got a great foundation and you most likely don't even recognize some of the things you know, but the biggest thing to keep in mind is that everyone's felt that way at some point, and that's why the spiral curriculum exists. Over time you'll be able to match that pre-clerkship knowledge to a patient, that patient to a management plan, that management plan to a morbidity and mortality round, and so on indefinitely. Every good clinician only got there by constantly adding upon their foundation again and again, and that's not only in clerkship but also in residency and practice. I absolutely felt the way you're feeling when I moved in to clerkship, and although it was rough getting used to the culture of medicine I was able to approach everything without any issues after a few months. The realization that got me there was that at the end of the day no one is going to expect a new clerk on the ward to remember everything, they're going to hope for you to do what each one of them had to do as well; take a history, make plan even if it's terrible, but then read around that case and use the experience to build upon your knowledge until the next plan needs no correction.

Our school lets us do a "vacation block" where instead of an elective you just have that 4 weeks off if you don't take any other vacation that year. You'd have to get in contact with your PGME office relatively soon to arrange it but it should be doable as it wouldn't affect any other blocks. That being said, especially in first year that may not be the best idea. There are some service heavy rotations you'll probably prefer to do 3 weeks in, it can be hard to go for months and months without any break, and that elective block can be really valuable for networking/building skills/covering some weaknesses. I spread my vacation throughout the year and had some great electives and certainly don't regret it

You should certainly know research methodology for family, however I don't think it's that relevant in being a competitive applicant. I can't speak for other schools, however at mine I reviewed some 20 family applications each of this year and last, and have seen 1 family medicine related research project in that entire time. You can be very competitive without it, and the vast majority of applicants are. In residency, our research project can be a QI project as well, with lots of support working through it so it's not all that needed for the future either.

I got the Momentum Visa fee waived, as per the link below it shouldn't be too hard http://forums.premed101.com/index.php?/topic/89632-medical-professional-loc-residency-limits/

Accepted to Hamilton at 8:38!

The MCAT no longer has a writing section, what is this for?