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What is each med school "known for"?


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10 hours ago, DocBrown9 said:

Yep there's a mandatory meeting with an academic advisor who tries to strongly suggest backing up with family. He's actually not terrible if you show him a good plan and strong CV. He will just tell you to be comfortable with the potential of going unmatched  No school will ever tell you to go all in for one specialty, it's not in their interests. 

To clarify things about Ottawa, while there is a lot of family med grads, it's about the same as all schools but u of t (more unmatched, less people actually applying to family). It's also known for pumping out ER residents. They are know for producing exceptional clerks. Along with queens there's a very low learner to staff ratio, which gives one experiences you wouldn't get at some other schools. A lot of residents will agree that Ottawa students function very well on the wards. 

This is just anecdotal but the few u of c students I've worked with tend to be pretty meh. (only worked with them when they were on elective at the beginning of clerkship). If blame the 3 years but mac students tend to perform a bit better so I'm not sure if it's just because the system is different in Calgary compared to Ontario or something like that. 

Many people choose to do family medicine, some schools more than others.  Many at my alma mater went into rural/mid-size FM for example with the express purpose of gunning for the +1 EM, or if not, stay/go rurally and challenge. They've had a strong track record of doing so, in addition to the numerous 5 year EM matches on a regular basis(top 3 schools to match EM).

I think this thread needs to remember to try not to read too much into what each school is "known" for.  A lot of it is very trainee dependent. 

As for X school clerks functioning "very well", just remember there is a lot of bias in what residents see on a regular basis.   There is big regional variances - the clerks that tend to get more hands on, more over-night call requirements during clerkship, more intensive inner-city internal medicine rotations, on average - tend to be better prepared.    Some colleagues had never done over-night call, held pager for first call on in-patient, etc while in medical school.  Does it really matter though? Doubtful, since residents even out after the first 6 months transition on average for baseline competence. Just means when they show up to day 1 medical teaching unit at a busy hospital service, they are more comfortable handling things. 

 

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14 minutes ago, ana_safavi said:

UOttawa & NOSM have the most egregious cases of discrimination, harassment and reprisal. Western & UofT the least. Mac and Queens are in the middle.

That’s what is most important when picking a school, IMO.

 

 

Fascinating if true; is there data backing this up or is it derived more from your personal experiences/anecdotally? 

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17 hours ago, DocBrown9 said:

This is just anecdotal but the few u of c students I've worked with tend to be pretty meh. (only worked with them when they were on elective at the beginning of clerkship). If blame the 3 years but mac students tend to perform a bit better so I'm not sure if it's just because the system is different in Calgary compared to Ontario or something like that. 

Do you think this is because UofC starts clerkship off with electives and students haven't had a chance to do any of their core rotations yet? I am a little concerned (incoming student at UofC) because I have heard this from more than one person before, and am unsure if I should be trying extra-hard to make up for this when I start clerkship. 

Interestingly, the national residency directors survery shows that ~95% UofC grads are equal or better than the avg resident, and over half are stronger than the avg, so perhaps this is an issue in early clerkship that gets resolved by the time students enter residency?

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On 6/12/2020 at 3:17 PM, TheFlyGuy said:

Fascinating if true; is there data backing this up or is it derived more from your personal experiences/anecdotally? 

I don't have data that would allow me to compare the *prevalence* of harassment between Ontario med schools (I only have internal data from NOSM), because med schools have strongly resisted any efforts to collect such comparative data (e.g. in the sexual harassment survey where "Research Ethics Boards of all 17 Canadian universities with medical schools approved the study but schools, themselves, chose not to have it circulated directly to their students. No school-identifying information was collected.")

That's why I stated that, based on my knowledge, uOttawa & NOSM have *the most egregious* cases.

What do I mean by that? Well, as we all know, every med school has a certain proportion of faculty members that bully medical students and residents (and almost always get away with it). However, the leadership at certain med schools will go to shocking lengths to further punish victims, at times even *pre-emptively* discrediting them in case they file a formal complaint. They double down and escalate, and they don't stop until they've driven the victim (or witness) of faculty misconduct out of the profession and/or to suicide. It's a coordinated strategy to silence victims and set an example for any other student who many think of reporting (or even just asking the faculty member to stop). Leadership will coerce faculty members (and at times, other students) to carry out these coordinated acts of retaliation at their behest, so that the people at the top can keep their hands clean in case the victim sues (NOSM & uOttawa keep getting sued, over and over again). Think about Trump's approach to whistleblowers (through Barr and other "fixers"), and you start to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

Other schools may not hold their faculty members accountable for harassment, but at least they seem to have limits to how many laws they will break (and how many outside organizations they will lean on) in order to intimidate victims and witnesses into silence. They attempt to quietly resolve the issue and deescalate the matter, rather than annihilate the victim.

All this to say -- you can be harassed at any medical school. But if you're harassed at NOSM or uOttawa and leadership finds out (even if they find out indirectly from someone else), kiss your career goodbye because they probably won't let you graduate.

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On 6/12/2020 at 2:30 AM, DocBrown9 said:

Yep there's a mandatory meeting with an academic advisor who tries to strongly suggest backing up with family. He's actually not terrible if you show him a good plan and strong CV. He will just tell you to be comfortable with the potential of going unmatched  No school will ever tell you to go all in for one specialty, it's not in their interests. 

To clarify things about Ottawa, while there is a lot of family med grads, it's about the same as all schools but u of t (more unmatched, less people actually applying to family). It's also known for pumping out ER residents. They are know for producing exceptional clerks. Along with queens there's a very low learner to staff ratio, which gives one experiences you wouldn't get at some other schools. A lot of residents will agree that Ottawa students function very well on the wards. 

This is just anecdotal but the few u of c students I've worked with tend to be pretty meh. (only worked with them when they were on elective at the beginning of clerkship). If blame the 3 years but mac students tend to perform a bit better so I'm not sure if it's just because the system is different in Calgary compared to Ontario or something like that. 

It might be the system, Mac students get 8 weeks of these quasi pre-clerkship electives that vary in mileage from simply shadowing to actual baby clerkship kind of work. I don't know if Calgary gets the same, but I will say that I wouldn't judge a school's students by early clerkship electives, literally an extra week or two of experience can make a huge difference on their comfort level and capabilities. 

By the end of all your training, those extra few weeks here and there won't make a difference. 

With that being said, I do find and still find that those early clerkship electives are useful to get your feet wet and explore specialties, but should not be used by the school as an excuse for true "pre-carms electives". It is much harder to get letters out of those rotations than when you have finished all your cores and are right before CaRMS. 

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47 minutes ago, Edict said:

It might be the system, Mac students get 8 weeks of these quasi pre-clerkship electives that vary in mileage from simply shadowing to actual baby clerkship kind of work. I don't know if Calgary gets the same, but I will say that I wouldn't judge a school's students by early clerkship electives, literally an extra week or two of experience can make a huge difference on their comfort level and capabilities. 

By the end of all your training, those extra few weeks here and there won't make a difference. 

With that being said, I do find and still find that those early clerkship electives are useful to get your feet wet and explore specialties, but should not be used by the school as an excuse for true "pre-carms electives". It is much harder to get letters out of those rotations than when you have finished all your cores and are right before CaRMS. 

Oh ya for sure early clerkship doesn't mean that much for schools overall performance. Just feels weird for people to be doing electives in places they want to match to that early. Gives them an inherent disadvantage. I still remember during my clerkship I was on psych with a Calgary elective student. I had a couple of cores behind me and this was there 2nd elective. My preceptor basically decided that she'd rather work with me (student with 0 interest in psych) than the elective student. I just feel bad cause when preceptors hear elective student... They expect a lot more than their core students. Residents at least still remember that students are at different parts of their learning on elective.

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