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[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi all,

 

Well I must say, having spent the last four days in balmy Vancouver, I'm wondering whether the stories of precipitation are complete myth!! Myth or no myth, however, your campus is a sight for sore eyes. Wah.

 

Some questions for you UBC'ers:

 

1) Where are meds classes held? I did a bit of a tour of campus and didn't notice any distinct medical school building. Are many of the lectures, etc., held in the UBC hospital?

 

2) With respect to the UBC hospital, what sorts of departments does it house?

 

Attending yesterday's MD/PhD Open House in the Peter Wall Building I was suprised at the relatively few number of potential applicants in attendance. However, it was a very informative session with speakers ranging from the students themselves, the MD/PhD Director as well as an Assistant Dean of Medicine.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest Ian Wong]

1) Med classes in Med 1 are held on the UBC campus. Lectures are held either in the IRC/Woodward building in one of the large lecture halls (this is the same building with the Woodward Biomedical Library), or in the Anatomy lecture hall located in the Friedman Building, where the cadaver and histology labs are located.

 

Med 2 classes are held both in the Anatomy lecture hall in the Friedman Building at UBC, or at another lecture hall (B Hall) in the Vancouver General Hospital complex.

 

Med 3's and Med 4's don't have many lectures. When we do, it is at local auditoriums/lecture halls within each teaching hospital, and therefore no time is spent at UBC, unless it's inside the hospital itself.

 

2) UBC Hospital serves as a place of training for Emerg, Internal Medicine, General Surgery, Anaesthesia, Orthopedic Surgery, and possibly others that I don't know about. Many of the other health sciences have teaching time there too: eg. Nursing, Physiotherapy...

 

I don't think this open house was very well publicized; or perhaps I just have my head stuck in the ground, because I didn't even know it was going on. Oh well.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hey there, thanks for the info.

 

With respect to the MD/PhD Open House, this was the second annual meeting and they are planning on holding the same for the next number of years.

 

If anyone is interested in this stream, or would simply like to learn more about the MD/PhD route, I'd advise going. It's information-packed and highly informative. Also, gaining a chance to receive the inside scoop from current students in the program is invaluable.

 

Ian, there must have been a few of your classmates there too as there were a couple of people who were in year 3 of the program.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest Ian Wong]

Go figure.

 

If they were in Year 3 of their MD/PhD program, then you probably met with Claire, Mike, and Paul, who are no longer in my class cohort because their MD studies progress intermittently with their research. If they were in Year 3 of their MD program, then they'd be in my class, and I'm a bit surprised, because I didn't hear anything about it, and I'm usually pretty up to date on that type of thing. Certainly, it wasn't advertised across our student list-serv on email.

 

Anyway, glad you enjoyed your visit. Vancouver is a wonderful city, and I'm a little choked by this as it means that a whole bunch of medical school graduates from elsewhere in Canada apply annually to BC post-graduate residency positions (leaving less Vancouver spots for us UBC folks).

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there Ian,

 

Yep, indeed it was Claire, Paul and Mike that were the year 3 representatives. I had a chance to speak with them all and they seem like great people with some insightful and candid views.

 

It's a bit strange that a note didn't go around the meds class (especially for the first years, who can still enter the program) as I think I overheard another MD/PhD student telling the Director (Dr. Anthony Chow) that a note had been sent around.

 

Regarding non-BCers infiltrating the post-grad positions, och, it happens all over the country. It seems like people are criss-crossing all over the place. Looking at the positive side, it adds to the diversity of the pool of people practicing in the area, and if they've been accepted, then generally you'd hope they'd be good and skilled.

 

On a different note, a question for you regarding meds residential areas: I scoped some neighbourhoods in the city and drove around to get a feel for the proximity of them to the school and hospitals. Kitsilano and S. Granville look ideal in terms of having a good neighbourhood-y feel as well as being fairly close to campus. Where would you say that the majority of students stay during the school years?

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen