Rural Training

[premedgirl]

Do I have to do all the stuff about independent decision making and self-reliance in the rural training section if I said I am not interested in the rural training?

[Jixe]

Definitely not! The application lets you proceed having selected no for those items.

[Kuantum]

Before you say you are not interested in rural training, it'd probably be best to speak with someone who actually understands what it is. It is not always being the only doctor in a town of 3000 or something. Remember, BC is a beautiful province and there is a lot to do. There are quite a few people in my class I have talked to (even those in the VFMP) who are quite interested in rural practice. So, think about it a little and then maybe figure things out. If you already know what rural practice is and you hate it, then ignore the above.

[avenir001]

hey i have a question...in the Non-Academic Experiences section of the application where it asks for activities under "Experiences in Rural/Remote/Northern/Aboriginal Communities or with Aboriginal People", so are they asking specifically for Canadian rural experience or can u include things like living in or visiting rural areas in other countries when u were younger and things like that?

sorry if this is a retarded question, and thanks.

[Jixe]

That's hardly a retarded question. I put experiences in both first-world and third-world countries around the world.

[Smurfette]

No, it's not a retarded question. You should definitely put in experiences involving living in other parts of Canada/world.

 

Rural medicine has lots of wonderful opportunities that many people don't realize. Things like having a broad scope of practice (it's less specialized than in urban areas so you can see a lot of different types of cases), getting to know your patients better. And "rural" or "community" medicine just involves smaller areas with smaller hospitals. It is not necessarily the stereotype of living in a farm somewhere with 10 patients in the area.

 

But coming back to the question of the application. I would try to address the question of independence and self-reliance regardless of whether you're interested in rural medicine because those are characteristics important to medicine in general. If you don't have experiences in Aboroginal/rural communities, then clearly you can't write about them. Theoretically, this should not affect your application since the "rural score" only comes into play after you've been accepted and you're being placed into one of the three sites.