Why Queens?

[coffee131]

With the approaching interviews, I was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to offer insight into the question 'Why Queens?'

I'm especially interested in hearing about people's experience with Queen's curriculum, rural rotation (I heard they have a unique program?), and student life/community!!

Thank you so much! 

[Savac]

I'll speak to the rural part a bit just so you have an idea of what it is. There's two possible things that this might refer to: community week after first year, or more likely, the integrated stream for clerkship.

 

1) Community Week

After 1st year, you do a mandatory 1 week family medicine rotation in a rural community. This is not unique to Queen's, but is a valuable experience all the same

 

2) Integrated

Usually our core blocks in clerkship are: Family Medicine, Psychiatry, Internal Medicine, Medicine Subspecialty, Surgery, Peri-Op (Emerg, Anesthesia, Surgical Sub-spec), Obs-Gyn, and Pediatrics in no particular order depending on your particular stream. Each of these blocks last 6 weeks, and then you move to the next specialty.

The integrated stream is a bit different. You spend 18 weeks in a rural community and work very closely with your preceptor throughout the entire time. This covers your family medicine, pediatrics, and psychiatry core rotations. This can be a really good experience, particularly if you're interested in family medicine. People on in the Integrated Stream do have pediatric and psychiatry bootcamps in Kingston to ensure that they receive adequate exposure in those disciplines.

I'm not actually in the integrated stream though, but maybe somebody else will chime in about that.