Is Mcgill Med More Gruelling Than Other Schools?

[jruspin]

I indirectly asked this question in the Ottawa sub-forum, as I'm currently choosing between these schools. Is it fair to say that med school, particularly clerkship, will be more intense at McGill than Ottawa (and other non-U of T schools)? I've heard that the Quebec system leads to very over-worked residents, and that spills over to med students where a lot more is expected of them. Can anyone who has gone through clerkship at McGill confirm this?

[a1b1]

Seeing as how no one does 2 medical degree's from two different faculties, it will be near impossible for someone to give you a non-biased opinion.

[Clover_236]

I am finishing up my clerkship at McGill. I wouldn’t call my personal experience overly intense, it was for sure challenging at times, some rotations more than others. I can give you a brief overview of the program:

We start our clinical experience in first year (LFME) and depending on which type of work setting your fam med preceptor has you could be going to out-patient clinics +/- OBs/in-patient ward or Emerg. In second year we have TCP (transiting to clinical practice) which serves as kind of a preview to clerkship and we rotate through some of the main rotations that we do in clerkship (IM, Surg, Peds) but with a lot less responsibilities than a clerk. Overall, given that we had a solid exposure to clinical medicine prior to 3^rd year, most of us were comfortable and adjusted fairly quickly to being in the hospital. McGill like other schools has specific work load limits for clerks, which you can find on our clerkship website. In the previous years these hours were at times not respected by the staff/residents and students ended up working more. However, they have revamped the work load policies with the new curriculum and have put in better mechanisms of keeping track and re-enforcing them. Overall most of the ppl that I know in our class have been pretty fine with the work load hours, not that they are easy per se, but that they were well within what was expected of us.

I can’t compare how clerkship experiences will be at other schools, but I suspect they’ll be more or less similar regardless of where you go.

[jruspin]

Seeing as how no one does 2 medical degree's from two different faculties, it will be near impossible for someone to give you a non-biased opinion.

 

Biased yes, but if people have friends at other schools and discuss their experiences, it could become apparent that one is consistently tougher. If the difference is slight then it's just a matter of opinion as you say, but if one group consistently ends up putting in 1.5x the hours then that would be the type of thing I'd want to know. I'm guessing that if no one has any strong feelings about this that it's more or less equivalent, which is good! I was just wondering if there was any dramatic difference.

 

 

 

I am finishing up my clerkship at McGill. I wouldn’t call my personal experience overly intense, it was for sure challenging at times, some rotations more than others. I can give you a brief overview of the program:

We start our clinical experience in first year (LFME) and depending on which type of work setting your fam med preceptor has you could be going to out-patient clinics +/- OBs/in-patient ward or Emerg. In second year we have TCP (transiting to clinical practice) which serves as kind of a preview to clerkship and we rotate through some of the main rotations that we do in clerkship (IM, Surg, Peds) but with a lot less responsibilities than a clerk. Overall, given that we had a solid exposure to clinical medicine prior to 3^rd year, most of us were comfortable and adjusted fairly quickly to being in the hospital. McGill like other schools has specific work load limits for clerks, which you can find on our clerkship website. In the previous years these hours were at times not respected by the staff/residents and students ended up working more. However, they have revamped the work load policies with the new curriculum and have put in better mechanisms of keeping track and re-enforcing them. Overall most of the ppl that I know in our class have been pretty fine with the work load hours, not that they are easy per se, but that they were well within what was expected of us.

I can’t compare how clerkship experiences will be at other schools, but I suspect they’ll be more or less similar regardless of where you go.

 

 

Thanks a ton for your response! Very helpful

[LittleDaisy]

I have friends at McGill currently as clerks..Unfortunately, in surgery and in obs& gyn, they still don't respect the clerk's work load hours (well 5h30-19h30-20h). I guess that when residents are overworked, it is hard for them to let clerks go early. 

 For IM at MGH, it starts at 7h30-18h for example.

Although the hours at French schools resemble the workload of McGill clerks, but a bit less demanding.

 

I am finishing up my clerkship at McGill. I wouldn’t call my personal experience overly intense, it was for sure challenging at times, some rotations more than others. I can give you a brief overview of the program:

We start our clinical experience in first year (LFME) and depending on which type of work setting your fam med preceptor has you could be going to out-patient clinics +/- OBs/in-patient ward or Emerg. In second year we have TCP (transiting to clinical practice) which serves as kind of a preview to clerkship and we rotate through some of the main rotations that we do in clerkship (IM, Surg, Peds) but with a lot less responsibilities than a clerk. Overall, given that we had a solid exposure to clinical medicine prior to 3^rd year, most of us were comfortable and adjusted fairly quickly to being in the hospital. McGill like other schools has specific work load limits for clerks, which you can find on our clerkship website. In the previous years these hours were at times not respected by the staff/residents and students ended up working more. However, they have revamped the work load policies with the new curriculum and have put in better mechanisms of keeping track and re-enforcing them. Overall most of the ppl that I know in our class have been pretty fine with the work load hours, not that they are easy per se, but that they were well within what was expected of us.

I can’t compare how clerkship experiences will be at other schools, but I suspect they’ll be more or less similar regardless of where you go.

 

[fred1987]

I have friends at McGill currently as clerks..Unfortunately, in surgery and in obs& gyn, they still don't respect the clerk's work load hours (well 5h30-19h30-20h). I guess that when residents are overworked, it is hard for them to let clerks go early. 

 For IM at MGH, it starts at 7h30-18h for example.

Although the hours at French schools resemble the workload of McGill clerks, but a bit less demanding.

 

A friend did her ER residency last year in the McGill University Health Centre hospitals after doing a family med residency at U of T and her med school out west. She told me that although McGill has a good reputation as a university, its medical system was the worst that she had worked in terms of technology (10-15 years behind the rest of the country in her estimation even with their new super-hospital), pay (among the lowest in Canada), and staffing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that this trickled down and impacted the quality of the med school rotations.

[oshaku]

A friend did her ER residency last year in the McGill University Health Centre hospitals after doing a family med residency at U of T and her med school out west. She told me that although McGill has a good reputation as a university, its medical system was the worst that she had worked in terms of technology (10-15 years behind the rest of the country in her estimation even with their new super-hospital), pay (among the lowest in Canada), and staffing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that this trickled down and impacted the quality of the med school rotations.

 

The lower pay is common to all of Quebec.  It is to make up for the fact that our med school tuition is only about a quarter of the tuition in the rest of Canada. 

[thethirdlaw]

A friend did her ER residency last year in the McGill University Health Centre hospitals after doing a family med residency at U of T and her med school out west. She told me that although McGill has a good reputation as a university, its medical system was the worst that she had worked in terms of technology (10-15 years behind the rest of the country in her estimation even with their new super-hospital), pay (among the lowest in Canada), and staffing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that this trickled down and impacted the quality of the med school rotations.

 

Strong first post. 15 years behind the rest of the country despite brand new facilities? I find that exceptionally hard to believe.

[fred1987]

I did research and volunteer work between the MUHC hospitals and McGill, and spent part of the last year working at the Glen super-hospital site. I know when it opened it was plagued with problems with the equipment and facilities being inadequate, which was covered repeatedly in news stories, and my friend complained constantly about how everything from the recording keeping was only partly digitized to the equipment that they used in the ER was outdated compared to what she was trained on in med school.

[Arztin]

The pay for residents is lower, but that's regulated by the province. Besides, if you compare the rent of TO vs Mtl, I doubt you're actually making more money if you're a resident at TO.

Exactly which part is 10-15 years behind?

Yes, I do admit, Qc is very slow when it comes to catching up with EMR, but that's a bit everywhere in Qc, not just a McGill thing. (This part does suck).

Facilities being inadequate in which sense? Is that just a McGill thing or a Canada thing?