Guest Tartuffe Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 Among the moderators, is there anybody who is interested in working or has already worked in rural area? I would be very interested to hear about your experience. I read in MacLean’s that Mac has some students in rural communities (doing clerkship?) and that they were able to access different resources through the web. I am aware that UWO has a Rural Medicine Unit that allows students to undertake a major portion of their education in the rural community. I also know that next year the Northern Ontario Medical School will open. But personally, I really like Mac unique training, therefore if I were accepted ; my plan would be to take some elective through (NEP) and eventually do the Northeastern Ontario Family Medicine Program or the Northeastern Ontario Postgraduate Specialty program. Yes I know, I am dreaming…but for now there is nothing else I can do… so I dream and pray :b I am also planning a trip to Greece (Épidore) in order to invoke Apollon and Asclepios Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jmh2005 Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 Tartuffe, We have a Rural Medicine Interest Group at Mac, which is a fun way to get involved in rural issues and learn a tonne at the same time. Already we have organized a fiberglass casting clinic and have run a 'Day in Rural Medicine' at the Fergus Hospital, just north of Guelph (a fabulous day and a fabulous area in which to practice, can't wait to visit this summer!!!). We have also been organizing speakers to come in and talk on a variety of topics all of which have been quite stimulating! There are plenty of elective opportunities to work in rural areas, basically whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go, you can, if you find a Physician to work with (which is usually very easy as they are eager to show you their town...). As well, every fall (late Sept) there is an Underserviced Communities Health Professional Recruitment Tour which visits the cities of all 5 med schools. This is a great opportunity to learn about the different communities, make connections for future electives and they also had some workshops on suturing and removing fish hooks (which is a needed skill in some areas...). If you are interested there will be many opportunities provided to you as a med student...they want you, so there will not be a shortage of things to pursue! I am planning on doing NEP this summer in Sudbury (not exactly Rural, but very underserviced...) for 4 weeks in Emerg., which I am very much looking forward to. There are several of my classmates who are doing NEP, NOMP (Thunder Bay area), SWORM (Southwestern Ont. Rural Medicine Program), and ROMP (Rural Ontario Medical Program), etc....again no shortage of opportunties available to you if you choose! Eventually I see myself practicing Family Medicine with Emerg in a smaller community and perhaps rural area...we shall see... There are now very popular post-grad residency programs which now specialize in training Family Physician, specifically for rural practice...Mac has an amazing program run out of Collingwood, Grimsby and 1 more place (sorry, I forget...), Western and U of T also have good programs run out of several smaller towns as well, and the NOMEC program in Sudbury (U of O) is excellent as well...check the CaRMS website if you have an interest.... Hope that helps, take care and good luck with the process, Jess Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tartuffe Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 Thank you very much for your answer… I am so jealous of you and now I am going to be soooooooooooo frustrated when I am going to find out that I do not have an interview. :x I am sure you will have a lot of fun. Where I grew up, I was an emergency response civilian volunteer and I heard a lot of interesting stories that involved farmers and / or tourists. :b Now I going to swim and dig in the NOMP, SWORM, ROMP and dream a little. I am glad to hear that those programs are eager to have you around… It would be a lot of fun if med schools were like that towards applicants Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 You forgot NOMEC. (NorthEASTERN Ontario Medical something or other - sorry, too many acronyms in Medicine to keep them all straight) Yep, quite a bit of our curriculum is geared around rural medicine. For starters, you have the links to the SWORRM (I'm pretty sure there's two Rs) program, which is run out of Western. SWORRM offers summer elective programs as well as the option of doing part of your 3rd year clerkship and or electives with them, similar to the ROMP, NOMEC, NOMP, and ?EORP? (there's an Eastern Ontario Program which is just getting off the ground) programs. Second, if you're keen, you can volunteer to be in the first year clinical methods (a course where you learn to take BP, Inspect, Palpate, Percuss, Auscultate, etc) group that is assigned to a rural hospital 45 minutes out of London. The doctor there is a GREAT clinical methods instructor and you can get a sense for this field right from first year Third, students in first year medicine participate in the "rural medicine experience" (or something or other, the official title isn't too important) where they are assigned to a rural community for a week. I participated in that last year and it was the best part of first year! I spent a week in a rural Hospital where I got to do everything from observerships with (visiting) radiologists, anaesthetists, and gastroenterologists to doing an overnight shift in the ER to actually removing one of the eyes from a recently deceased patient whose family wanted to donate his corneas for transplant. Fourth, in third year clerkship we can do anywhere from 4-weeks to 12-weeks of our rotations (mostly Family, Psych and Obs/gyn, perhaps Peds as well) in a rural centre (if you want to wimp out because you have NO interest in rural medicine you can choose to do "rural" psychiatry in St. Thomas.) And the fifth opportunity is your 4th year electives, which can be done rurally. Personally, I think the training you get from rural experiences tends to be fantastic, particularly for family medicine. Rural family docs do pretty much all the stuff city family guys do, but they're also (in many centres) the only docs and as such are the "go-to" people for everything. The docs I worked with last year ran a family clinic, covered the ER, and even did some internal medicine. There were no pediatricians or geriatricians so they were responsible for all age groups. In other centres, they might assist on surgeries, do deliveries, maybe even some anaesthesia. The range of things you'll see in a rural medicine training experience is really rather incredible. There's also not many other med students competing for the doc's time, as there may be in academic centres. Personally, I'm planning on doing as many of my family medicine weeks as possible in a rural setting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tartuffe Posted February 28, 2003 Report Share Posted February 28, 2003 At the risk of asking a stupid... I have read about the Sioux Lookout zone (zonedocs.com) and I wonder if there is some opportunities for MacStudents to do some electives over there. Just few days before being crushed Tartuffe As some people say in my home town: " Tartiflette et petits lardons cela va etre dure a digerer. " Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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