Missing clerkship time for CARMs

[Guest MDintraining]

Hi,

 

I am wondering what happens when you have CARMs interviews at the same time as your mandatory clerkship rotations. If you have a lot of interviews, does it mean that you might fail your rotation? Someone was telling me that in Calgary, for example, the pediatrics rotation is 6 weeks but they have you "make up the time" you miss. What does this mean, exactly? Do you have to go back for an extra week at the end of the year or postpone graduation?

 

Thanks,

 

MDintraining

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

Here at UofC we are allowed a limited number of days off of our mandatory rotations to attend CaRMS interviews. (I believe the number of days for us is currently 8, although that may be increasing for the incoming class due to the revamping of the curriculum.) In any case, if we require more than the "free" number of days off for interviews (the maximum number of possible interview days for Canadian med school graduates this year is 21) then we do have to make up those extra days. How this translates is that, say I have my Internal Medicine rotation in Jan/Feb 2007 and I need to take a total of 14 days to travel for and complete interviews, then I would need to spend an additional 6 days in Internal Medicine to recoup this lost time. These 6 days would be "made up" at the end of all our rotations, the last day of which is April 6th. Since our graduation day is May 10th 2007, then there is plenty of time to make up these days, presuming that the average student will not be interviewing for the full 21 days available. Unless something bizarre occurs, everyone should graduate at the same time.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen