Starting residency with the eventual goal of moving provinces

[CBaleMD?]

I'm an internal medicine resident in a smaller program/town, however my partner lives in a large city in another province. The goal is to eventually move there, and I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on how I can optimize my fellowship applications or how to make it easier to relocate as a staff. 

Thanks! 

[bearded frog]

I did this. I made no effort to hide this as well ("I love the program but my career goals is to work in province X to be closer to family and serve the people of my home community, blah blah blah").

I had the benefit of not pursuing a Royal College fellowship, but I did end up doing a non-accredited fellowship in the city I wanted to work in to get my foot in the door. During residency I did all my electives in the target province, and you could too, staying with your partner.The complicating factor is fellowship, and if you would rather do fellowship in a specific discipline anywhere if needed and then move back when done fellowship, I probably would split my electives targeting my top programs for fellowship as opposed to doing them all in your target city to work in. During your elective at your target program and during fellowship match with that program, definitely strongly emphasize your desire to work there eventually, regardless of where your match, and your connection (your partner living there). If there was a way to do a project or research or something with someone from that program that would obviously help. That being said, if the discipline is small enough that there is only a spot or few at your target school then you might be competing with strong local residents who want to stay and have strong connections with the program, so you might be unsuccessful regardless of how hard you work, and you need to consider this possibility (another ~2 years long-distance to do your desired field vs different sub-specialty or 4y GIM to return to your partner ASAP).

During my electives I had met with the department head of the place I wanted to work, talking about how I wanted to work there, and near the end of residency, I reached out to them about paths to do so, and eventually landed in my fellowship which transitioned directly into a staff role at a relatively compeditive place to work. However, as a general pediatrician, with demand as it is, I could have just shown up and there are many locums available or I could have easily joined a clinic and found work right away. If you're in a specialty that needs OR time or other specialized provincial services and can't do FFS then you might have to do something to get your foot in the door like a sub-fellowship, unless you match for fellowship at your home province. That being said, once you're in fellowship, the community gets tight knit so you probably can network at conferences or have people in your program reach out on your behalf.

I also looked at the protocols and stuff in my home province when studying as opposed to my residency province in preparation for moving back.

[CBaleMD?]

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond! I am definitely still weighing possible fellowships and am cognizant that if it's more competitive, I'll have to be cautious putting too many eggs in any one particular basket. Hopefully with electives and networking I'll be able to get my foot in the door more, and I appreciate your advice!