Funding of residency positions by municipal or provincial governments

[BlackJack]

Is it possible for a student to set up a deal with a municipality or province to practice in X location for Y years if said municipality or province pays to have another residency spot opened in Z program for this student?

 

Also, this program would not be family medicine(obviously). This program is more along the lines of radiology or something highly competitive.

 

Is this a possibility for students whose odds are against them in matching into their desired(by many) specialty?

[TonesRN]

Interesting question for sure. I don't think this would be possible as more residency positions are already needed but are not created due to lack of funding/lack of mentorship. Clearly, there would be an incentive for a municipal/provincial health organization to have a resident sign a contract to work X number of yrs post residency...but I doubt this is even possible. I would also be most interested to hear other responses to this thread!

[D-Rock]

I don't think it could happen because of the strains that it would put on the training programs that run the residencies. It seems like a really good idea, and maybe in the future someone will have the initiative to force it into reality, but the universities would have a conniption if they were told they needed to fit X number more residents into their program.

 

This would be particularly troublesome for the popular locations where students really want to do their residencies. Imagine UofT's response to being told they need to make space for 4 extra radiologists one year because 4 communities are all paying for the residents to start the program. And since it is essentially buying the training, there has to be a prioritization system for which communities get to buy the spots, assuming there is competition for them.

[vip_138]

A relative of mine did something similar. It was for psychiatry, however it was a special case since they only needed to finish residency, i think 2 years left. Also, it was a spouse of another psychiatrist, so technically the region got 2 psychiatrists through this deal.

 

There were a lot of special circumstances about this, so you might have trouble setting it up normally, especially with a more competitive specialty. The region where the couple signed a contract for, at the time were severely desperate for psychiatrists, i'm not sure if the same thing could happen for a radiology residency

 

if you have more questions on this, pm me

[NLengr]

I would imagine it would be quite hard to do. A student just doesn't have the pull to get a provincial governments attention.

[ELA]

definately possible provided the residency program has room for you. for example i know of a derm resident who has his funding provided by a rural municipality only if he agreed to work x number of years in that location.

 

this is only possible if that residency program has room for another resident. however, i'm not sure how common this is since i know only of this once case.

[D-Rock]

But was the above derm case pre-arranged prior to getting into residency, or was it set up after acquiring the position? I get the impression the original question was in the setting where the student wants to get into a specialty and plans to do so by getting funding from an underserviced area to provide an additional residency position.

[Ian Wong]

This definitely can happen, and I saw cases of it for Plastics, ENT, and Radiology when I was at UBC. It's known as external funding. The double-catch is that you need to find a city that will fund you, and the program needs to have a spot for you.

 

Ian

[TonesRN]

This definitely can happen, and I saw cases of it for Plastics, ENT, and Radiology when I was at UBC. It's known as external funding. The double-catch is that you need to find a city that will fund you, and the program needs to have a spot for you.

 

So who would one have to talk to to get the wheels in motion regarding this? Head of specialty department? Head of health region? Provincial minister of health? Others?

[Ian Wong]

I don't honestly know. In UBC's case, it was the city of Prince George that needed those specialists, and somehow money was found to fund for those residents.

 

I think it occurs on a case by case basis, and depending on where you end up for medical school, you probably would want to talk with the various program directors and your Dean's Office to see if they've had past resident who have gotten external funding before. It's a pretty rare situation that will not apply to the vast majority of Canadian med school graduates.

 

Ian

[TonesRN]

Thanks for the reply Ian. I'm definitely going to explore this avenue further.

[coastalslacker]

Thanks for the reply Ian. I'm definitely going to explore this avenue further.

 

Um, if you're Mac 2011, you haven't started med school yet. I don't understand why you would need to "explore this avenue". Why don't you go through med school and the match and see if you get what you want by the avenue 99.99% of people take?

 

Incidentally, this external funding of residency posistions actually happens quite extensively in Canada-just with residents from Saudi Arabia. The programs get big bucks for them to train here. I've heard this can compromise the quality of certain programs simply from an over-crowding point of view. I'm not going to name specific programs, but I know that in orthopedics this has been a problem in a few centres.

[TonesRN]

Um, if you're Mac 2011, you haven't started med school yet. I don't understand why you would need to "explore this avenue". Why don't you go through med school and the match and see if you get what you want by the avenue 99.99% of people take?

 

You are confusing the word 'explore' with the word 'do'. I do plan to go into the match like 99.99% of others. I'm simply interested in finding information on how external funding is done for my own personal knowledge.

[coastalslacker]

lol. okay.