Residency & UofT Academy

[bright2020 3]

Hello,

I was hoping to hear from residents and doctors who recently received their MD in Toronto or current UofT students in 3rd or 4th year.

What are the qualities of each Academy that may increase or decrease one's chances of matching into a particular specialty?

1. FitzGerald Academy

2. Mississauga Academy of Medicine

3. Peters-Boyd Academy

4. Wightman-Berris Academy

What are the strengths of their member hospitals, in the context of preparing for a given specialty or even matching in general?

Thank you in advance for your insights!

[ToughLuck 27]

You can match the whatever specialty you want from whatever academy you want.

All the academies have a "city" hospital and at least 1 community hospital, so you get a chance to practice in the community if you wish.

There are only small difference in the services provided in each academy, as TGH is the specialty site for transplant and St. Mike's + Sunnybrook are the 2 trauma sites.

So if you are interested in those fields, it'll be easier to be in those settings. That said, there is no problem in shadowing those sites or doing electives in them, even if you are in a different academy.

Hope that helps

[bright2020 3]

On 2/13/2020 at 5:28 PM, ToughLuck said:

You can match the whatever specialty you want from whatever academy you want.

All the academies have a "city" hospital and at least 1 community hospital, so you get a chance to practice in the community if you wish.

There are only small difference in the services provided in each academy, as TGH is the specialty site for transplant and St. Mike's + Sunnybrook are the 2 trauma sites.

So if you are interested in those fields, it'll be easier to be in those settings. That said, there is no problem in shadowing those sites or doing electives in them, even if you are in a different academy.

Hope that helps

Thank you for your reply

Do you know of any other characteristics unique to each Academy?

I was hoping that could guide my decision on how I ranked them

[Galaxsci 43]

Agreed, there is no matching advantage at any academy. Numbers are nearly equivalent every year between the academies.

In terms of other things, WB is a larger academy, so it tends to be a little less close knit. That said, there are more world renowned docs, more hospital sites to choose from, and (possibly) more research opportunities based out of the hospitals. Although anybody can do research anywhere and it's quite easy as a med student to get research, it's even easier at your home academy.

Fitz is known as an inner city academy because it centers around St. Mike's. So if you have an interest in inner city health, homeless populations, or social determinants of health, you'd definitely want to choose fitz. Also known as the most close knit academy.

PB is centered around Sunnybrook and the biggest factor that turns people away from it is that you have to commute to Sunnybrook multiple times per week (though there is a free shuttle from Women's College). Other than that, it's a great academy, has great learning opportunities, and is also quite close knit.

[MD2015:) 44]

It doesn't matter. Agree with above - if you are interested in inner city health then pick Fitz. I was at WB and some of my clerkship rotations included oncology and so maybe if you are interested in oncology you might end up doing a bit more of it at WB. TGH is a transplant site but I didnt really get any exposure to transplant. You can do electives at any site you want in 4th year so you can work with whoever you want. My friends from MAM did a ton of electives downtown and did not have difficulty matching to residency.

[lemons22 15]

4th year PB student- also agree with above! For PB, Sunnybrook is also a big cancer center in Toronto (Odette Cancer Center) so you can also get exposure to oncology there. Also, all the St. George academies had a few spots in each of their clerkship streams for other non-academy clerkship sites (eg. CAMH for psych, UHN/Sinai for internal med, Sickkids for peds etc.)... so I was personally was only at Sunnybrook for 2 rotations in CC3 and able to do a lot of downtown sites. 

[James Nystead 251]

2 minutes ago, lemons22 said:

4th year PB student- also agree with above! For PB, Sunnybrook is also a big cancer center in Toronto (Odette Cancer Center) so you can also get exposure to oncology there. Also, all the St. George academies had a few spots in each of their clerkship streams for other non-academy clerkship sites (eg. CAMH for psych, UHN/Sinai for internal med, Sickkids for peds etc.)... so I was personally was only at Sunnybrook for 2 rotations in CC3 and able to do a lot of downtown sites. 

Whats the diff between PMH and Odette

[lemons22 15]

1 minute ago, William Osler said:

Whats the diff between PMH and Odette

Sorry I never did a rotation at PMH (I'm not sure if WB med students rotate there?). During clerkship I had some ambulatory surgical oncology clinics at Odette (eg. colon cancer, breast cancer, melanoma etc.) where you would see patients referred there before their surgery and for post-surgical follow up. Also as a CC3 I was able to scrub into the ORs for surgical oncology cases (eg. hemicolectomy for colon cancer, whipple for pancreatic cancer). I heard from my friends that they would see cancer patients at Sunnybrook during internal medicine too, eg. if they present to the ER and need to be admitted to hospital for an issue (eg. febrile neutropenia).