medisforme

It's low stress, easy work but usually the corporations that run them charge you significant "overhead" relative to their actual expenses; usually at least 30%. There is a bit of a backlash against them in BC right now from longitudinal family docs as they are not really compatible with wholistic, full scope primary care and take away all the "easy" appointments (Rx refills etc...). It is also seen as a bit of a corporate invasion of the health care system (their advertisements are splashed absolutely everywhere) trying to entice patients with quick, no frills appointments. My final

A related point is the importance of knowing how to read preceptors when you get into clerkship. Expectations (unfairly), communication styles and interactions will always be different from preceptor to preceptor. It is incredibly important to pick up on nuances of your preceptor starting on the first day to maximize your chances of a successful rotation. Unfortunately, clerkship is a bit of a game, that you have to know how to play. I have seen above average medical students (and residents) have poor rotations because they don't have a good grasp with how to change their approach dependin

In BC you get paid $23/week for providing OAT, regardless of whether you see the patient or not. Stable patients you only need to see once every 4 weeks. Consequently, a 10min visit essentially pays you $92 (multiply that by 30-40 stable patients and you can see how it is lucrative). Conversely, unstable patients often need to be checked in on weekly at a minimum and sometimes more if they relapse, fail to fill Rx etc..., in this case you would only make $11.50-23/visit. no where near as lucrative.

Re: +1 in addiction. Unless you want to do full time addiction with focus on in-patient/hospital consults you really don't need +1. (at least in BC). In BC they are so desperate for people to get into addiction that they will pay GP's (without +1) sessional fees to learn on the go. It's definitely not an area you go into to make extra money. Having said that, if you are able to build up a relatively stable patient base (somewhat of an oxymoron in addiction medicine i know), its actually extremely lucrative. The problem is the time and effort to get to that point. It makes more s

You have to look up the individual programs and rotations, because they are all over the map. At my FM residency program, obs and intermediate care nursery were 24hr in-house call and insanely busy. The typical FM call was hospitalist call 1:4 and hours were 5-11pm. GenSx was technically 24hr call but the surgeon tended to be first call after 11pm and only called us in if they thought we could learn from the case (which was rarely the case as most of the time you would be called in for the surgical assist and nothing more). Some FM programs in BC are in-house overnight hospital cal

the pre-requisites were bio 12 and chem 12. The first and second year nursing curriculum consisted of 3 credits of superficial A&P, 3 credits of supercificial path and 1 credit of pharmacology. No basic science taught.

I agree with the above post. It is more for the benefit of getting a good start to medical school than it is for selection criteria. On a personal level, I came into medical school from a nursing background, which is really quite devoid of basic science. I was incredibly overwhelmed during the first 3-4 weeks of medical school as most of the material was relatively new to me, while it was essentially a simple review for most of the students (things like genetics, DNA science, bacterial translocation, cell biology etc...). However, with a little extra studying i was able to keep afloat and

To clarify my point, it was in reference to residency interviews, nothing more, and I clearly said it doesn't reflect my personal opinion. There is nothing wrong with voicing interests in areas of family medicine during a residency interview. The only point I was making is that certain applicants were docked points when they ONLY discussed interest in one area of family medicine and did not touch on the longitudinal aspects of the specialty.

EM is the obvious one, I think most people know better than to do that. The couple of times it happened during our interviews, it was applicants discussing wanting to be a hospitalist or a sports med clinician.

There are very few people who would have done both exams, so you probably won't get any answers from personal experience. I think it is pretty well acknowledged the Royal College exams are much more difficult for a variety of obvious reasons. For context, I studied about 3 hours/day for 3 months for the combined CFPC oral/written exam and probably could have studied a little less. My understanding is that a lot of R5+ residents are studying 4-8hrs everyday for a year to prepare for the Royal College exam.

Re: Derm residency. My understanding is that it is heavily IM based for first 1-2 years and you work like a dog until you actually start your derm rotations.

One other note, that doesn't reflect my personal opinion but I noted from a couple of local site leads whom I interviewed beside. Applicants were docked points if they solely expressed interest in a niche/subspecialty area of family medicine (sports med, ER, hospitalist, obstetrics are the 4 that come to mind) during the interview without discussing concurrent interest in longitudinal care (though given the enormous number of applicants, I really don't think this would make or break your application).

1) PBL/CBL preceptor (with UBC at least) pays decent given how relaxing the work is, though if you don't live near campus, there would be a lot of travel involved which can affect other potential work duties that same day. From my experience, it was mostly docs close or at retirement doing these gigs. 2) Botox/skin cosmetics 3) pharmaceutical company (i met a few docs doing this, though I personally don't see how this would be in any way rewarding aside from the financial aspect). 4) From a family med perspective, there really isn't any money to be made from being an intervie

I purposely did 90% of clerkship and residency outside of vancouver, and I never met an FM+1 COE anywhere. I am not even clear what their role is compared to a "regular" GP with an interest in elderly care. I am guessing jobs for them are confined to larger cities. Outside of Vancouver, they are screaming for docs for residential care, it is very easy to find work. In Vancouver, it is obviously more difficult to find work/jobs in niche areas of family medicine.

The other thing no one has mentioned is being completely up to date or your province's billing codes. It is worthwhile to take a mini course or memorize the billing codes so you can maximize your billings. A couple of local GP's here recently hired a company to review their billings and it was found they were underbilling up to 50k/year. Never assume your MOA/manager is maximizing your billing, you have to check it yourself (at least initially until you have them trained how to bill).