Information about UWO Program

[cluelessaboutmed]

Hi everyone,

 

I am having trouble finding information about the med program at UWO. Their website is fairly hard to navigate through and find useful information. I was wondering if someone could give me some insight about what's so great about UWO?

 

I am looking more along the lines of

1) How does the school fair on the LMCC exams

2) Class sizes, amount of lectures/PBLs

3) CaRMS results

4) Marking scheme ie) Honours/Pass/Fail system?

5) Typical day at UWO med

6) And anything particularly unique about UWO

 

Thanks!

[el laryngo]

Dear Clueless,

We are in the final stages of the new website with answers to essentially all the questions you have (we'll post the link asap), but in the meantime i'll offer some insight to your questions:

1) Western does very well on LMCC exams, and like most schools tends to excel in some areas and average out with other schools on other parts. I don't know too much about this myself, maybe one of the senior posters can offer more insight?

2) The current 1st year class is 139 students, and I beleive the class of 2011 will be going up to 146 (then it will go down again for the class of 2012, when about 25 students will do their full 4 years at the Windsor campus). Our typical week has more or less:

- 23 hours schedule M-F am, and M afternoon (classroom lectures, PBL, anatomy lab, small group learning)

- 2 hours (Patient-Centered learning, groups of 8)

- 3 hours (Clinical Skills, groups of 4)

We get 2 afternoons off a week, which is great for catching up with the rest of your work or doing whatever else you want, otherwise the week is pretty busy (like you probably expect, coming to med school).

3) Same as question 1, Western does very well every year, and the CaRMS match isn't so much what school you're from but what you're interested, how you sell yourself to the residency program, and what you've done during med school to prepare yourself for their residency (much like getting into med school). You can find more info on match results here: http://www.carms.ca/eng/operations_R1reports_06_e.shtml

4) Marking scheme is Pass/Fail for everything, which almost all of us agree is absolutely fantastic.

5) Typical day at UWO: we have an image of a sample weekly calendar on the new website, so please stay tuned.

6) Interesting stuff about UWO:

- clerkship is first-call, and recognized as probably the best clerkship program in Canada

- the current head of the World Health Organization is a UWO grad (Dr Margaret Chan)

- we beat all the other english-speaking med schools at medgames this year!

 

I hope that helps!

Mike

[ploughboy]

 

1) Western does very well on LMCC exams, and like most schools tends to excel in some areas and average out with other schools on other parts. I don't know too much about this myself, maybe one of the senior posters can offer more insight?

 

 

We do fine on the LMCC exams, as does pretty much everybody who graduates from a Canadian school. I really wouldn't put too much weight on this if you're deciding between med schools.

 

Another nice thing about UWO - you do all your core clerkship rotations *before* your electives, and all of your clerkship electives are done before CaRMS.

[temp_degoo]

We do fine on the LMCC exams, as does pretty much everybody who graduates from a Canadian school. I really wouldn't put too much weight on this if you're deciding between med schools.

 

Another nice thing about UWO - you do all your core clerkship rotations *before* your electives, and all of your clerkship electives are done before CaRMS.

 

Do you know where this is not the case?

[TimmyMax]

Hey,

 

Lots of other schools still have to do electives and/or mandatory rotations in the midst of CaRMS. An example of this is U of Calgary. There are definitely others, though.

[ploughboy]

Off the top of my head, I think Queens is another - they start their clerkship pretty late.

 

Different strokes, etc.

[blinknoodle]

Do you know where this is not the case?

 

Many, many schools have lotteries where your clerkship track is selected, so that while not everyone has electives in odd places, it does happen. While on clerkship, I have run into students from 2 Ontario medical schools, where the first student was starting clerkship with ?10 weeks of away electives, and the second student had ?4 weeks at home, and then a big chunk of away electives.

 

At UWO, there is a clerkship lottery too, but everyone has electives Sept-Dec after you are finished your core clerkship. To me, the great thing is that you have actually experienced a good portion of clerkship before you start to set your electives up. If you start with electives, or shortly thereafter, you have to set up your elective months in advance, without clinical experience. With so many competitive specialties wanting to see nearly all electives in their area, it can be difficult unless you have already decided what to do. Personally, I have enjoyed making a more educated decision on where I would prefer to do my electives.

[ploughboy]

At UWO, there is a clerkship lottery too.

 

 

Rotation #8! Woo-hoo! IM/Psych/FM/Surgery/ObGyn/Paeds! Ya-hoo! Hurray!

 

Err...sorry. As you were...

 

pb

[temp_degoo]

I think I'm falling for UWO. You guys, the information presented, the tons of contact via email are all really really impressive.

[katerade]

Rotation #8! Woo-hoo! IM/Psych/FM/Surgery/ObGyn/Paeds! Ya-hoo! Hurray!

 

Err...sorry. As you were...

 

pb

 

Why is this a good rotation?

 

it seems that UWO has fewer 'required' or scheduled clerkship rotations. other schools have emergency med, derm, anesthesia, and others. is this because UWO has more electives than other schools? or are the blocks allocated to surgery, IM, family etc any longer than they would be at other schools?

 

Also, are there any electives that people tend to try and do outside of london because the hospitals in london tend not to be strong in that area? i know they are strong in neurology .... but they must be weaker in some areas. and are you allowed to go and do a nimber of electives in other cities or are you limities to only one or 2.

 

Thanks

[ploughboy]

Why is this a good rotation?

 

it seems that UWO has fewer 'required' or scheduled clerkship rotations. other schools have emergency med, derm, anesthesia, and others. is this because UWO has more electives than other schools? or are the blocks allocated to surgery, IM, family etc any longer than they would be at other schools?

 

Also, are there any electives that people tend to try and do outside of london because the hospitals in london tend not to be strong in that area? i know they are strong in neurology .... but they must be weaker in some areas. and are you allowed to go and do a nimber of electives in other cities or are you limities to only one or 2.

 

Thanks

 

It's a good rotation because it starts me off with IM so I can actually learn how to manage patients on a ward, figure out how to function in the middle of the night on zero sleep while taking call etc right away. Essentially it's going to teach me how to be a good clerk (and a good doctor) right away. Then I get a little break (psyche, family) before going to Windsor for what are arguably the three best 3rd-year experiences available to UWO clerks - surgery, ob-gyn and paeds in Windsor.

 

Since I'm positive that I don't want to do gyn or paeds for a career I'm happy to have them last. If I was sitting on the fence about them (like I am with a couple of medical and surgical surgical specialties, along with family meds) it would suck to have them last. I'd either have to have planned some 4th year electives in them before actually experiencing the day-to-day work in 3rd year (you have to schedule your 4th year electives in advance) or if the summer rolled around and I discovered that I loved paeds I'd have to scramble to set up 4th year electives. As it is, I can go and enjoy the learning experience simply for what it is. (Wow, awkward phrasing, I hope you understood what I mean)

 

On the other hand, I know people who are positive they want to go into paeds who are also on rotation 8. Since they know they want to do paeds, they want to have lots of experience under their belts before doing their 3rd year paeds so that they can shine and get good reference letters. And since they know they want to do paeds, they'll just be going ahead and planning paeds electives for the fall of '08 before doing their core paeds in the summer of '08.

 

So rotation 8 works for me, but wasn't actually the most popular selection for people in my class. A lot of people wanted a rotation that had surgery first (either to get it out of the way because they know they don't want to be surgeons, or to determine whether or not they could handle a career as a surgeon) and then had psyche and family in the summer (mmm...sitting on the beach after work...)

 

As for the length of time on each service, I'm not sure of the exact requirements required for accreditation, but this is how things are currently broken down at UWO:

 

Surgery = 12 weeks

Medicine = 12 weeks

Family = 6 weeks

Ob/Gyn = 6 weeks

Psych = 6 weeks

Paeds = 6 weeks

 

Electives = 16 (?) weeks

 

I vaguely remember reading a study in the mainstream media last fall about the surgical skills of graduating medical students. The authors kinda picked on another Ontario med school, which shall remain nameless, and it sounded like they only had six weeks surgery. But you can't believe everything you read in the paper...

 

 

Emergency med = two weeks required during my surgery rotation, plus all the other admissions from the ER that I'll be doing while on other services (eg medicine, psyche)

 

Anaesthesia = two-week selective during my surgery rotation. Wouldn't have even looked at this had not TimmyMax evangelized so much for it on this board, but gas, ortho and ENT will likely be my surgical selectives next year)

 

Derm = not offered at UWO (McGill, Ottawa, Toronto, Alberta, UBC have the only English-language derm programs in the country)

 

 

Electives - at UWO you take all of your clerkship electives between September and December of your 4th year. You can do them anywhere in the world that you want to, including at UWO. So using the example above, if you were a derm keener (like a couple of people in my class) you would probably want to do some derm electives at a school that actually has a dermatology residency program. You can do a minimum of two weeks in each elective, but it's probably smarter to do 3 or 4 week long electives to give yourself time to get used to the hospital and shine in your last couple of weeks.

 

Hope that helps.

 

pb

[blinknoodle]

I wanted to highlight that some of those "selectives" you mentioned are hidden in your core clerkship. Pb has a fabulous post though.

 

Surgery = 12 weeks. Mandatory rotations are 4 weeks general surgery and 2 weeks ER. You can pick 3 other selectives (2 weeks each) from anesthesia, urology, vascular, thoracic, neurosurg, cardiac, ortho, plastics, paeds gen surg/urology and paeds ortho/plastics. It sounds like ENT/ophtho might be in this group now too.

 

Pediatrics = 6 weeks. Mandatory rotations = 2 weeks paeds CTU, 2 weeks paeds ER. One 2-week selective from neonatology, paeds development, endocrinology, infectious disease, cardiology, GI, nephro, neurology, heme/onc, critical care, respirology. (Schedule changes a bit if you do community paeds for 4-6 weeks)

 

Ob/gyn = 6 weeks. Depends on your site, but you get a good mix of gyne OR/clinic + obstetrics (clinic + delivery room). You can choose to do 1-day electives in gyne onc (if not scheduled), infertility, abortion counselling, amniocentesis, etc.

 

Medicine = 12 weeks. Mandatory 6 weeks on CTU, 2 weeks oncology, 2 weeks either ENT/ophtho or elder care (may have switched for upcoming clerks). One 2-week selective in either any med subspecialty (cardiology, respirology, rheumatology, etc), radiology, PM&R, or pathology.

 

Family = 6 weeks. 2 weeks mandatory at an academic centre in London. 4 weeks anywhere else including London.

 

Psych = 6 weeks. I havent done it yet, but you dont get any selectives. It is all just psych.

 

And then after that, you can do your 16-weeks of electives.

 

The lottery is just to see where you will start for clerkship. Generally everyone follows the same loop, it just depends where you start. People choose different rotations for a variety of reasons - things they want to rule in, things they want to rule out, rotations they will get in the summer, start with more intense rotations or rotations that will prepare you well, etc.