disability insurance?!

[Guest not rex morgan]

Maybe someone could clear this up for me. Why do they strongly reccomend we get dissability insurance before we start school? Doesn't that usually cover wages lost in the event of an injury? As a student, I'm not planning on getting a large salary.

[Guest BCgirl]

Maybe it's disablility insurance on your student loans... like if you got injured and couldn't work so then you couldn't pay back your loans.

[Guest Ian Wong]

This is likely a package from Jeanie Haslett, no?

 

If so, you can safely rest assured that probably 60-70% of our class, at the present time heading into Med 3, still does NOT have disability insurance.

 

Like the instructions that tell you to buy a microscope for Histology, it's actually an optional purchase that most students don't opt to do. The concept of disability insurance, and of course there's different levels of coverage and security, is that in the event that you are injured to the extent that you can't practise medicine, that the disability insurance will pay you money for as long as you theoretically could have been working.

 

As a future doctor, your insurance will cover you to some fraction of your future potential income, so you would receive a larger disability payment, than, for example a teacher or a plumber.

 

While disability insurance conjures up notions of head-on car collisions, or traumatic chain-saw accidents, in medical school, I think it can be neatly summed up by the phrase: blood-borne diseases.

 

Since you will be exposed to patients by the first month of medical school, and could theoretically, depending on the freedom given to you by the family doctor you receive be delivering vaccinations, observing and helping with deliveries, or otherwise be exposed to bodily fluids during office or hospital work, the medical student faces a much higher chance of become infected with pretty much anything versus a random member of the population.

 

For example, if you to become infected with Hep C or HIV via a needle-stick, your options for medical practice are significantly limited. A career in a surgical specialty, or other areas with significant invasive procedures such as Emerg are no longer a realistic option for you. That's the significant of having disability insurance.

 

Where I see the best time to get disability insurance is during the transition from Med 2 to Med 3. From Med 3 onwards, all of your time is spent in the hospitals, and there is a huge amount of patient contact. Add that to the fact that we learn most of our invasive stuff during this time, and that we are relatively clinically-inexperienced, and the setting is ripe for exposure to all sorts of infectious diseases. Realistically, the vast majority of Med 1 and Med 2 students won't be seeing large amounts of blood and fluids during your offices visits to family doctors.

 

Finally, you'll get more details on this stuff during Orientation. Don't sweat it now; you'll be told more later, and can then make a better decision.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3