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Electives at UBC


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Hi,

 

I will be entering clerkship next year and want to do an elective at UBC, as I am considering applying there for residency.

 

Many of the areas I am interested in require a 4 week elective in Vancouver or Victoria, but only require a 2 week elective at some of the other peripheral sites (Kelowna, for ex).

 

I was only hoping to do a 2 week elective to keep costs down and because of commitments back at home. I know that although not technically necessary, if you want to go to a school for residency it is good to have done an elective there. My question is, would an elective at a peripheral site such as Kelowna be looked at the same as one done at Vancouver General? ie- Would an elective at a site like Kelowna be considered having done an elective with UBC?

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That depends. In general, I'd say no. The purpose of an elective is (a) to meet people on the admissions comittee (B) to impress said people and garner a letter of reference and © to gain an impression of the training program. If you are planning on doing a residency at UBC and it isn't family medicine in Kelowna then you should actually see what it's like at VGH and St. Pauls and meet the people that you will be working with. This is really important, both for you and the program. It will also give you an edge when it comes to residency applications.

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Yeah those were my thoughts as well but I was trying to rationalize something else to make it easier on myself.

 

Guess I either need to suck it up and go for 4 weeks or do something that isn't my first choice for 2 weeks.

 

I am wanting to do internal medicine and was going to do a general medicine/CTU elective but in Van you need to do at least 4 weeks it looks like. Do you guys think a subspecialty elective would be less optimal?

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There are many more electives in other IM disciplines then on CTU in Van. I would not do CTU if I were you. Like any CTU, it is generally a gong-show, with frequently changing staff, and much more secreterial work then actual medical work. In short, not an ideal way to impress someone and garner a reference letter.

 

I did an ID elective at St. Pauls, which was very busy and OK. Some of the staff were good, others not. If Montessorri or Press are working you'll have a good time. If Phillips is working then you won't. The staff are on a two week rota. Endocrine might be OK. Cardiology at St. Pauls is also OK. That's all second hand from people who I know who did those rotations. Oh, if you do Cards at St. Pauls, you'd better enjoy rounding for hours hashing over the useless minutae between equally useless clinical trials. Which is the better ACE inhibitor? Truly, a question for the ages.

 

I think what I would do in your situation is call the administrators at whatever elective you want to do and get an idea of the staff rotation schedule i.e. how often they change over and pick an elective where you get a maximum amount of face time. They will certainly have this information.

 

Oh, and about St. Pauls - it seems to me that the staff associated with electives is generally both useless and lazy. The person "organizing" the ID elective was unable to tell me where the lockers were, where I could keep my things, about organizing ID's or computer access etc. All questions were answered with "Page the senior resident." If you expect absolutely nothing from the admin staff, then you'll be pleasently surprised when they manage to do anything. Oh, occasionally the Infectious disease office has free copies of Sanford - go and get one from them.

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Unless things have changed since I was in clerkship, getting electives at UBC will be the bane of your existence. Even UBC students have a hard time getting the electives they want. (to be fair I heard UofT is a pain for visiting students).

 

Even though the electives office tell you not to contact departments directly, I suggest that you do so anyways. If there's a certain staff you want to work with, you could email them, or you could contact the admin person for the department/division. I had surprising success with the clerkship admin person for getting a gyne elective. Don't expect to hear anything from UBC until maybe 6-8 weeks before the elective start date (which is why it's good to have unofficial conformation from the department first).

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