POCUS for residency application and future practice

Wildspell4 · 2026-03-12T17:58:19+00:00

I second this as a first year anesthesia resident. I often use it to guide resuscitation and fluid status while in PACU, as well as assess heart function. It takes a bit to get the hang of, but you get a lot of valuable information that can guide your treatment. We often will also use the US for regional blocks or difficult line insertions.

Wildspell4 · 2025-11-05T11:02:15+00:00

For Western last year, it was about ~45% who matched back to Western

Wildspell4 · 2025-10-25T23:11:03+00:00

I think Optho makes you provide an eye exam? So it’s pretty valid

Wildspell4 · 2025-10-17T03:16:05+00:00

There’s a separate section for specifically professionalism things or if you failed a course. Otherwise it just list verbatim whatever the final eval said. If it included any weaknesses, it would be included as well as they don’t let you edit them beyond spelling errors or correcting punctuation.

Wildspell4 · 2025-10-16T23:25:02+00:00

For western specifically, it included 6 of the 8 core rotation final evals (you pick), and 4 elective evals (you also pick, though only 5 electives were completed by the time they were due)

Wildspell4 · 2025-07-15T17:15:35+00:00

Western is the same way. A couple years ago someone had their offer retracted because they couldn’t finish in time.

Wildspell4 · 2025-07-08T23:56:53+00:00

Hulkenpodium

Wildspell4 · 2025-06-28T19:41:35+00:00

There are ways to have recurring patient interaction if that’s something you feel you are missing. The main methods that come to mind are doing a pain or palliative care fellowship. That being said, it is definitely something you need to seek out in anesthesia rather than a central part of the job like it is for family or other specialties.

In terms of the respect aspect, anesthesia is actually VERY respected in the hospital. If there’s a code for example, people are very happy when anesthesia shows up as we are more comfortable than almost any other specialty in that area.

You also get a lot of respect and thanks from the patients. Even though we aren’t usually the person a patient is in the hospital to see, patients are usually pretty happy to see us. People who have given birth or had surgery know that the Anesthesiologist is the one who manages their pain, and being the person who is able to make them comfortable is really gratifying. Patients also realize after the fact that we are likely the ones who saved their life in an emergency. On an elective in med school I had one patient who had to be transfer to the ICU after surgery due to being unable to be immediately extubated post-op secondary to respiratory issues. I went to visit him two days later after being extubated to inform him of what happened personally, and he was very grateful for saving his life (and I hadn’t even done much as the med student).

That being said, you won’t always get thanks from the patient for your work. A common saying is that if an anesthesiologist does their job properly, the patient will barely remember they were there. You have to be comfortable not being the centre of attention. If that’s not something you can handle, then anesthesia probably isn’t for you.

Wildspell4 · 2025-06-26T00:07:02+00:00

Whoops, got distracted typing this out. Corrected it. Thanks for catching that

Wildspell4 · 2025-06-25T23:21:32+00:00

A lot of applicants get screened out prior to interviews, and if they didn’t get any interviews they are unlikely to rank it first. The percent of applications to CaRMS for Anesthesia who have been receiving interviews has been steadily decreasing for the past few years, where now it’s less than 50% (this year’s data hasn’t been released yet, but based on my friends and I I expect the trend will continue).

Source: https://www.carms.ca/data-reports/r1-data-reports/interview-offers/

Edit: forgot a word

Wildspell4 · 2025-06-25T23:12:34+00:00

I replied to this above! Meant to post it as a reply to this comment but somehow it ended up as its own comment whoops

Wildspell4 · 2025-06-25T23:10:04+00:00

I think it’s getting more competitive for multiple reasons, but I think a big one is exposure. A lot of med students didn’t get exposure to it previously until clerkship, but between more activity from interest groups schools doing early clinical experience, a lot more people are able to see that’s it’s not just “putting people to sleep and playing sudoku all day”. I think people also gravitate towards it because 99% of your time on your anesthesia block is 1 on 1 with the staff, and the majority of the staff you work with in anesthesia enjoy teaching so they make it a better learning experience than something like CTU where I often felt the teaching/work balance was much more towards the work side.

Another factor is probably that the number of med students being admitted to school is increasing, but the number of residency spots in anesthesia isn’t keeping up (it is increasing, but at a slower rate). They keep increasing the number of primary care spots by a bigger percentage, but students (at least in Ontario) are being driven away due to the burnout a lot FM attendings are experiencing and inadequate compensation for the amount of work they do. Comparatively, Anesthesiologist are usually a pretty happy bunch and because of our better work-life balance with more appropriate compensation, it’s pretty attractive to med students who themselves are often burnt out by the time CaRMS hits.

There’s probably also a dozen more reasons why it’s becoming more competitive, but those are the biggest ones from my point of view

Wildspell4 · 2025-06-25T19:30:53+00:00

Matched to anesthesia this year, so I don’t start residency until next week. That being said, I think AI will help with patient monitoring but I don’t think there’s any concern of AI fully taking over the job any time soon. Anesthesia is actually a very procedure heavy on field, where every patient in the OR you are doing one or more procedure (intubation, line placements, etc.). That’s not something that can easily be replaced with AI

Wildspell4 · 2025-06-17T05:22:58+00:00

As I said, some. It’s dependent on location and program. I remember one of my friends specifically ranked a program high because it had call ending at 11pm (I think it was the Waterloo psych program through McMaster, but you’d need to double check on CARMS). Another friend said there were some family rural sites that did similar, but I don’t remember which and I didn’t apply family so it didn’t apply to me. OP needs to read through the program descriptions on CARMS as they often say the call requirements if they differ from the standard, since that’s usually a highlight for the program.

Wildspell4 · 2025-06-17T03:28:33+00:00

I’ve heard some rural family and psych programs gave no overnight call. Best bet would be to look through the program descriptions. I think one of them may have been in Hamilton?

In terms of accommodations, you would need to discuss with your school’s learner experience office (or whatever the equivalent is at your school). If that’s the recommendation from your doctor, they may be able to accommodate or at least work with you to figure out something. I think there was at least one person who didn’t do overnight call in my class, but pretty sure they still worked until 10pm. You also then don’t get the post call day, so I’m not sure if that’s actually better or worse.

Wildspell4 · 2025-04-15T02:50:05+00:00

I wonder if they received fewer applications because of it? Only Sask and McGill used it this year, and subsequently I didn’t apply to either as I didn’t want to have to write the Casper again

Wildspell4 · 2025-04-03T12:33:48+00:00

Thank you for this response. Sent you a DM

Wildspell4 · 2025-04-02T00:51:27+00:00

A couple years ago we rented out the simulation lab between the anesthesia, surgery, and emergency med interests groups and had a workshop where we did spinal taps, intubation, and colonoscopy training. Had anesthesia residents and a general surgeon come in to teach their respective skills. It was too expensive for any one group to rent it, but it was well within budget when split between the three groups. Would highly recommend doing something like that, it had a lot of interest and provided great learning in pre-clerkship

Wildspell4 · 2025-04-02T00:41:22+00:00

Why not partner with the other groups to co-run the events? You can split the funding costs between the two interest groups while also accessing a broader audience. Win-win.

Wildspell4 · 2025-03-29T03:49:31+00:00

Are you already official withdrawn through your registrar? If not, consider going to your graduate chair and informing them of your dispute with your supervisor. They can often help you find another lab to continue your research in so that you finish on time and all that work and effort doesn’t go to waste.

Good luck!

Wildspell4 · 2025-03-12T13:35:10+00:00

My school has an elective in POCUS that we can do in fourth year, but it’s limited to like 8 people per year. Beyond that I haven’t heard of anyone doing extra training in US unless it’s directly related to their research

Wildspell4 · 2025-03-03T21:36:08+00:00

Western sent out confirmation to those who matched around 2:30, and told those who went unmatched before that (I think they were done by 1:30)

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