Good preceptors for Family Med Elective

[amethyst]

Anyone have suggestions for good preceptors to work with for family medicine electives in Toronto or Ottawa or Mac? People on the selection committee at these schools would be even better! Thanks!

[flying kumquat]

Ottawa has had a policy for a couple of years (that was briefly revoked, then reinstated) of not letting visiting medical students do electives in family medicine. Not being able to do a family medicine elective there is not supposed to affect your application to their program for CaRMS - I certainly hope not, anyway!

 

If you'd like to get experience around the Ottawa area, you could do an elective through ERMEP. Carleton Place and Pembroke are towns that host the rural streams of the Ottawa program. Specifically, I can recommend Bill Potvin in Carleton Place as a really nice guy who has a great well-rounded practice (office, obs, ER, inpatients). He is affiliated with the Ottawa and Queen's programs and frequently has residents in his practice as well. Gillian Buckley is the head of the Carleton Place stream.

 

Another option would be to do an elective based either at the Civic or Riverside hospitals. These hospitals have two of the four family medicine units, and I'm sure "people to know" would be happy to meet you and tell you about their particular unit. A good family-related rotation at Riverside is Rheumatology, though it might be more difficult to get a letter out of it, given that you switch through a number of preceptors.