BC Election

[Guest BCgirl]

I don't live in BC right now, but I just heard about the election results. So, the Liberals won almost all the seats... well, I know the NDP did a pretty poor job, but one party having such a large majority (and I guess they are the only official provincial political party in BC now) cannot be a good thing. What sort of changes do you guys think we should expect to see in BC and what effects will they have on things like tuition, number of seats at UBC, health care in general, etc?

[Guest Katie]

If I remember correctly, I believe the Liberals are promising to increase the # of seats for 1st year med students to something like 500 over the next 10 or so years. Wouldn't that be great!

[Guest Mufactor]

when you look at ontario with population around 9 million, they only have about 600 spots in 5 med schools combined. quebec has about 6-7million with about 400 spots provincewide. BC's pop. ranked #3 in canada (3 million). if you work out the ratio you should find approximately 1 entering med school student per 15000/20000 population). so as for BC is concerned it should have 200 spots MAX (actual number is 120).

unless the liberals have too much money to burn, they won't put educating future BC docs. as their #1 priority.

 

btw, the BC liberal is not affiliated to the federal liberal party.

[Guest Katie]

Yikes! Ok, so I doubled the number. The Liberals say they're planning to increase admissions to 256 over the next 10 years. Sorry! Here's the link:

www.bcliberals.com/news/newsarchive2001/news04200102.shtml

[Guest Mufactor]

kaite: i am not trying to discredit you but i just want to emphasize that politicans are professional lyers. liberals are no better than ndp when they come to promising this and that and in the end only maybe 20% of their promises came true. right now the liberals are more inclined to revive the almost belly-up bc economy than doing anything else. i mean if training more doc and nurses will boost a real growth in the economy for sure they will do that at no time. but i guess they are simply paying lip services here and there to "buy" votes, or at least to remind bc residents to "get out, dump ndp and vote for liberal" on may 16th because "liberals will bring you goodies."

 

i never trusted any politicans since i graduated from high shcool.

 

anyway. good luck to you and all you doc wannabes.

[Guest Ian Wong]

Hi all,

 

Currently, there's plans for UBC to increase seats by 8 students for the next four years, starting this September. The Med 1 class this year (Class of 2004) has 120 seats, and this September, UBC will be admitting 128 students, and after 4 years, will have an additional 32 students for an annual seat total of 152. This is as far as has been confirmed, from reports within UBC.

 

Realistically, I think everyone out there in cyberspace should remember that adding seats in med school isn't as simple as just accepting the next 8 people off the waitlist. As it stands now, most lecture halls are pretty full, and there is definite congestion in Anatomy, Histology, and Clinical Skills, where (in my opinion) the ratio of students to teaching material is already strained.

 

As a result, for any more dramatic increases in seats, there will have to be new infrastructure to support this (more classrooms, more lab space, more professors recruited, etc). This is part of the reason for the heavy looks into providing medical training in Victoria, and possibly Prince George/Kelowna.

 

I think also, that there has to be an increase in seats at the post-graduate level. Currently, UBC med already graduates more med students each year, than it accepts as residents in post-grad (ie. specialty) training. I believe right now that although we graduate 120 med students per year, we only have 107 residency spots. It isn't to BC's advantage to graduate more students if they must then leave to Ontario, Alberta, or other provinces to train as family docs, pediatricians, surgeons, or whatever else...

 

Ian

UBC, MS2