Swomen

[nosuperman]

First of all, I am not complaining about my hard work. If you look back, that was someone else and I was merely asking why her hard work should count for more than mine just because she has SWOMEN status. Second, let's get real...everyone takes bird courses to lighten their load - SWOMEN or not so that point is irrelevant.

 

I do understand the need for more doctors in rural areas, I just think there are better ways to do it than discriminating against people from urban or suburban areas.

 

It isn't the only thing they're doing though. As you know, incentive-based solutions have been failing to act as long term fixes. As you also know, there are no guarantees linking your place or upbringing to your place of practice.

 

SWOMEN just tries to nudge the probabilities. It isn't about valuing your hard work differently, its about acknowledging differences that exist across different demographics (rural and urban) and acknowledging a potentially massive bias would exist without intervention.

 

If you don't discriminate against Toronto and the GTA you necessarily discriminate against rural Ontario due to the overlooked-in-this-thread fact that its all a lottery to some degree and Toronto gets the most ballots. Yes, these ballots are all worthy and inherently similarly qualified, but at the end of the day small towns need to win the doctor lottery every once in a while and Toronto is staffing itself just fine.

 

In the end there are significantly more qualified applicants than there are spots so for many it just comes down to probabilities. There are only a few ways you can compare premeds and most have high GPA's, MCAT's, strong EC's and excellent interview skills. A lot of it comes down to numbers.

 

So for every one applicant in Harrow (population 3000) or Amherstburg or bigger centers like Chatham or Leamington getting 4.0's you've got 500 in Toronto and 150 in Mississauga doing the same - getting those monster scores and awesome EC's. Without intervention we should see (all else relatively equal) a large majority of every class being composed of students from the GTA.

 

That's the first probability. The second is once you're in there is a degree to which you will consider rural and that is very reasonably correlated with where you grew up.

 

If you are socialized to be comfortable in a rural setting, to have your formative years occur in a rural setting, to have your friends, families, and networks exist in a rural setting - you're much more likely to give rural medicine a fair shot. Not only is this reasonable but (as Obi stated) its readily observable. It doesn't mean you're guaranteed, but it certainly helps. If you grew up with the TTC, shopping malls, bar and club districts, niche restaurants, and a booming arts and music scene, the transition to rural Ontario is much more significant.

 

Through anecdotal experience with other med students, I've found an often overlooked aspect is that students also have to consider getting their partners or families to transition to rural med for them. So not only are you making this large transition but your partner is too. The job opportunities moving from Toronto to Hamilton or London are not the same as moving to Harrow or Wallaceburg.

 

Again its not a guarantee but you're nudging the probabilities against a very skewed baseline.

[nosuperman]

The other thing to keep in mind is that they're doing more than just having different cutoffs. We have lots of exposure to rural medicine throughout medical school and we're required to make several appearances in the rural setting from year one onward. So its not like they're sitting back and saying, "Oh yeah this is the best answer" - they're using multiple angles to try to shift those probabilities without over-emphasizing monetary incentives.

[thehumanmacbook]

I think this is a really interesting thread I can (somewhat) contribute to as a current applicant who's interviewing at Western in a couple of weeks. Before actually applying this year, I felt that SWOMEN and other geographic advantage policies were unfair and biased because I felt that changing where I went to high school/was raised and born was something that was impossible to improve, and as an applicant you feel like you need every advantage you can get. I didn't choose where my parents decided to settle or send me to high school. In addition, I was also partially freaked out on whether I could get that 11 VR, so that added pressure along with seeing SWOMEN with 9 VR being accepted didn't help alter my views. I really felt that everyone should be assessed to a fair and equal basic standard across the board.

 

What happened eventually changed was focusing on what I actually could do, like VR practice and spent time reflecting and journaling my ECs. I networked and tried to get as many people to help review my application, asking for feedback, good referees, etc. Through the process, I stopped focusing on what I couldn't change (like SWOMEN status) and tried to bring out the best of myself in the app. I think that if you're a great applicant, you don't need these policies to get in somewhere (like the post above with the 39 R MCAT who was SWOMEN as well), and I don't think it should be your concern either on who does and doesn't get in other than yourself. And if you need to work on something (like MCAT VR) then it's not just Western that's going to give you a hard time - Mac and Calg will as well. A general maxim from all the past and present cycles from this forum is to apply broadly and try your best.

 

What's more is that with SWOMEN, NOSM and other geographic policies is perhaps my perception of the added pressure that comes with it - that you have to "return and help the community that you're from". Although I understand from working first hand in rural areas of the need for physicians and improving access of care, through my education I don't want the bias or the pressure to choose something I'm potentially not interested in. I'm not saying either that individuals who benefitted from geographic advantage policies are by any means forced to return, but from speaking to some it seems like there is a pressure sometimes harkens to the tune of "this community helped get you in, so you better return the favour". I imagine I would definitely feel this pressure as well, and I'm somewhat glad I got interviews anyway without these policies.

 

A good point brought up before is that people in these communities do pay tax and should get a piece of the healthcare pie. Are these policies unfair? I think there are a lot of things that can be interpreted as "unfair" in any application stage - but instead of dwelling on it, I definitely focused more on improving the weaknesses that I had in my own application instead of pinning it on a policy I can't control. And if I get in, SWOMEN or non-SWOMEN they will still be my classmates who will experience similar struggles and joys that I might. In the long run, who cares? Sure policies will change and there will be winners and losers, but the only thing anyone at the applicant stage can do is focus on the player, not da game.

[rmorelan]

First of all, I am not complaining about my hard work. If you look back, that was someone else and I was merely asking why her hard work should count for more than mine just because she has SWOMEN status. Second, let's get real...everyone takes bird courses to lighten their load - SWOMEN or not so that point is irrelevant.

 

I do understand the need for more doctors in rural areas, I just think there are better ways to do it than discriminating against people from urban or suburban areas.

 

excellent actually sharing those ideas is important - I mean this is a problem we have to solve and most like it is someone at the beginning of their training that is going to solve it.

 

In the end we do need some sort of balance - this is socialize health care and socialized education. The needs of both the student and communities must be balanced and thus neither group will get exactly what they want.

[future_doc]

Although of course there are no guarantees, if a med school wants their students to remain in the area after med school, it is a no brainer that the best applicants are from that same area, not those with higher grades or whatever who have not been invested in the community.

[nosuperman]

What's more is that with SWOMEN, NOSM and other geographic policies is perhaps my perception of the added pressure that comes with it - that you have to "return and help the community that you're from". Although I understand from working first hand in rural areas of the need for physicians and improving access of care, through my education I don't want the bias or the pressure to choose something I'm potentially not interested in. I'm not saying either that individuals who benefitted from geographic advantage policies are by any means forced to return, but from speaking to some it seems like there is a pressure sometimes harkens to the tune of "this community helped get you in, so you better return the favour". I imagine I would definitely feel this pressure as well, and I'm somewhat glad I got interviews anyway without these policies.

 

This is a great, often-overlooked point. Docs have been shown to greatly underestimate the degree to which their behavior is impacted by exposure to ads, gifts, and visits from private industry reps. So much so actually that in the last few years many top med schools have made big changes in how they regulate student exposure to private industry. Its interesting and reasonable to see these same forces existing in trying to rectify the problematic distribution of healthcare in Canada. Its worth noting that this is actually going to be happening to us throughout our careers, regardless of the institution we're with, both overtly and covertly. Its always good to be self-aware and realize, "Hey they're being super friendly to me, I wonder how this could bias my decision making later on..."