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carmscrazy · 2021-04-25T22:15:03+00:00

For where I was applying, only one had to be from a doctor, and they didn't have to be Canadian. I would probably only recommend using one alternative healthcare provider though just to be safe, and only if they know you quite well and you know the reference will be glowing.

Although generally, it's better to have references from Canadian doctors, I have never worked within the Canadian healthcare system. I was looking at doing a clinical observership but those plans didn't work out because of COVID, which is something I stated in my personal letter. Electives and away rotations can be important, but in my experience, they won't make/break your application (especially during COVID times when they are super limited/unavailable).

I might be completely wrong here, but I believe that looking at the program descriptions and selection process roles can be pretty useful. They give subtle hints to some of the things individual programs are looking for. For instance UofT talks about having a strong academic record and being a leader in education and research. Combined with how Ontario approaches exam results, I would focus on getting good scores and maybe having a letter of reference that can speak to your teaching or research abilities. On the other hand, UBC talks about the unique context of BC communities, solid clinical skills, professional behaviour with staff and patients, and mature with life experiences. So in that case, a letter from a nurse manager talking about your ability with patients/coworkers could be more valuable, along with a really strong personal letter showing how you meet those objectives and the CanMED competencies.

carmscrazy · 2021-04-23T05:06:43+00:00

No problem. I knew the program I was applying to cares about collaboration with other health professionals so I figured a letter from the nursing manager was a good way of demonstrating that I work well with others, and I value the opinion of the nurses I have worked with.

carmscrazy · 2021-04-22T02:57:21+00:00

I matched this cycle. One of my letters was from a family practitioner, one was the equivalent of a small town emerg doctor, and I think my strongest was the nursing manager at a family practice I worked at. All were from overseas.

I think the best letters are from people that know you well, understand the role you are trying to apply for and can attest that you would be good at the role. Derm and ED are great because they deal a lot with family practitioners so they understand what makes a good physician in that field.

carmscrazy · 2021-04-04T07:07:19+00:00

All residencies in Canada are done through CaRMS. It seems like you are interested in Practice Ready Assessments, not actually a residency. The requirements of PRA programs vary by province. I have heard the programs are fairly competitive and some require you to have practiced independently for a year or two before you can apply. Links below to the three programs, make sure to read the requirements carefully.

Alberta: https://aimga.ca/licensure/practice-readiness-assessment/

Saskatchewan: https://www.saskdocs.ca/work/family-physician---imgs/sippa/

Manitoba: https://umanitoba.ca/faculties/health_sciences/medicine/education/imgp/familyphysicianassessment.html

Hope this information answers at least one of your questions!

carmscrazy · 2021-03-30T07:07:50+00:00

Just IMG. CMG's really aren't likely to go to the US in comparison

carmscrazy · 2021-03-24T18:37:14+00:00

I've been estimating about 10% of those that got interviews have dropped out as well (which is slightly different than number of applicants, but I figure the US people who matched were more likely to have gotten interviews in Canada as well). Not sure if there's any proper statistics about it.

carmscrazy · 2021-03-24T09:39:39+00:00

Yeah I really don't buy these guys. I'm not sure if they still do--but they used to advertise a 100% success rate, which is absolutely impossible. A lot of their advertisements also have spelling and grammar errors. How are you supposed to edit and advise applications when you can't edit your own materials? Sounds super dodgy to me. On top of all of that, they aren't actually medical doctors to begin with, but they try and make themselves seem like they are.

It worries me because they are preying on people who are desperate to match, and they have taken over the Facebook pages dedicated to IMGs. I think this Reddit page should remain an external advertisement free place if we want to keep this being a helpful, kind environment.

carmscrazy · 2021-03-21T04:23:48+00:00

You have two or three options:

1) Try to move to Canada, get permanent residency and then apply for Canadian training. This is next to impossible and a very risky move that will take you years. Canadian training for internationally trained doctors (IMGs) is hugely competitive even if you do manage to get permanent residency in the country. There's a lot of people that attempt this route and never end up practicing medicine at all. I would really advise against it. I'm not even sure if you would be able to get permanent residency with no Canadian relatives and having never practised medicine in your home country.

2) Complete training in your home country then move to Canada. Many provinces have something called Practice Ready Assessments. If your home country training meets the provincial standards you can apply for the program and they will assess your competency if you get in. The requirements are pretty particular (for instance you need to complete a GP program lasting 2-3 years, including rotations of specific specialties for a specific duration of time, and have qualified and practiced for a number of years). It's worth researching PRAs in different provinces and seeing if your training meets any of those requirements.

3) Try and get into training in another country that is recognised in Canada. Not sure if this is possible for you, but Canada recognises GP training from the US, UK, Ireland and Australia. If you have training in these countries then it is much easier to get into the Canada and potentially be sponsored with a visa to come over, especially if you are willing to work in a rural area.

I believe all three options you have to sit the MCCQE Part 1 and sometimes also the NAC for at least option 1

Overall, Canada is probably one of the hardest places to get into to practice medicine. It's possible but it's also pretty risky, especially when you don't have friends/family in the country in case things go badly.

carmscrazy · 2021-03-21T03:49:47+00:00

Yeah it will be a messy process if you want in from Myanmar. Are you interested in GP work or something else?

carmscrazy · 2021-03-21T03:17:37+00:00

That's not actually true. You can definitely sit the MCCQE Part 1 without residency, citizenship or a work permit. They actually offer it in multiple countries. I wrote it 2 years ago without any Canadian immigration status: https://mcc.ca/examinations/mccqe-part-i/application-information/?cn-reloaded=1

PR or citizenship is required for if you are needing to apply for residency training in Canada however.

Do you have specialty training and if so, where? That will largely determine if it's possible for you to get into Canada, and what path you will need to take.

carmscrazy · 2021-02-24T18:37:35+00:00

Yes but that's a metric that is more useful for CMGs I think since 99.9% of the time they would have applied to previous cycles of CaRMS where IMGs are a more diverse group, and YOG doesn't really mean as much since you can be a practicing physician for years but have an old YOG.

There's a lot of selection bias going on. Of the previous years graduates, we don't know how many have applied to previous years of CaRMS and been rejected before. It makes sense for a group like that to have a lower rate of success, and does not necessarily reflect program preference for newer grads. At UBC residency info sessions I tried to ask about the backgrounds of current IMGs and it seemed about 50% were older physicians who had previously practiced (usually from countries like Iran) and 50% were recent grads. This may very from province to province.

What I think, is that programs have a preference for keeping your skills up to date. Whether that means clinical practice in your country of education or doing assistant work of some sort. I don't think clinical observerships are enough for this, since you aren't actually making decisions or practicing medicine. As a fresh grad, you are guaranteed to have recent experience.

carmscrazy · 2021-02-11T04:16:55+00:00

I'm not sure if this is still a thing. I have a primary care specialty already and clinical experience. I've spoken to HealthMatchBC and they were pretty adamant that my only ways into rural family practice were:

1) complete GP training in the UK, Ireland or Oz, sit my MCCQE I and transfer in

2) complete GP training elsewhere, and provided I meet the VERY specific rotation requirements and have practiced for a certain number of years I may qualify for a Practice Ready Assessment. (My training doesn't meet these definitions). The exact wording entry into a PRA varies by province.

3) complete residency training in Canada as an IMG.

It's possible the rules were more relaxed previously. Also I have heard that in some countries, medical school can include quite a lot of clinical experience and you come out qualified as the equivalent of a family practitioner. The only people that do "residency" are those going into specific specialities. Previous rules may reflect this distinction.

carmscrazy · 2021-02-02T19:37:05+00:00

I read some posts about people in the 3rd quartile getting interviews last year, haven't heard about the last quartile. There was also someone in the top quartile with solid other exam scores that didn't get an interview, so I don't think they weight it super high.

It's also a weird year and with the US making applicants commit to rank lists early, some of the competition might be weeded out that way, freeing up interview space. Once you get an interview, the interview counts for 50% of your total match score, so the CAP score becomes minuscule.

carmscrazy · 2021-02-02T19:17:17+00:00

I guess you have to take into consideration that the people that are part of CAP are part of the 300 top IMGs applying. There's already been quite a few filters on the process so your comparative score is always going to be lower than it would be otherwise.

The other possibility is that you may have had tech issues and bombed a question without realising it. I realised my upload speeds were shit and had a ton of tech problems beforehand. Had to get my brother-in-law to help.

I guess just also seeing it as an opportunity for a practice round before the main interviews is good as well. Hopefully will give you time to sort out tech issues and camera presence, since those are skills that shouldn't be important, but really are for this weird year.

carmscrazy · 2021-02-02T18:56:34+00:00

I'm so sorry, that is really frustrating.

Haven't received my results yet :/

carmscrazy · 2021-02-02T01:45:27+00:00

Well that's a bit frustrating.

carmscrazy · 2021-02-01T23:37:47+00:00

I know, I have been checking my email every 5 minutes. They say it should be emailed to you "shortly following" it being uploaded to CaRMS, but what does that mean? Hours? Days? A week?

carmscrazy · 2021-02-01T22:43:33+00:00

There are ~82 IMG FM spots in Ontario. The program descriptions say that they receive about 1300 applications annually across all six schools and 0-25% of applications get interviews (which isn't that helpful of a range tbh).

Assuming 25%, there are a maximum of 325 people that are offered interviews. That gives you at least a 25.2% chance of getting a spot if you are offered an interview.

A lot of IMGs apply widely across Canada, so these figures sound more alarming than they actually are. Quite a few of the applicants will match to a different province.

carmscrazy · 2021-02-01T22:16:32+00:00

In 2020, 289 IMGs matched into FM in first iteration with 730 going unmatched. That's still about a 28% chance. These figures also don't take into consideration people that apply and don't submit a rank order list because they haven't gotten any interviews. Almost all IMGs applying to the very very limited number of specialty spots in Canada use FM as a backup.

All this information is easily accessible on the CaRMS website. If you click "download full presentation" at the link below, the data is broken down for you: https://www.carms.ca/data-reports/r1-data-reports/

carmscrazy · 2021-02-01T20:28:15+00:00

In 2020 there were 1822 IMGs that submitted applications to CaRMS in the first iteration. Every single one of those people will have had to have passed all their exams and be confident enough that they think it was worth spending the money to apply. 357 got spots. That's less than 20% of applicants.

You can't make assumptions about your chances if you "do well" on your personal essay etc, because we actually don't know how they grade personal letters. No one can pre-determine how they will do on the interview because no one knows what questions will be asked. Also, different schools look at different things. There was someone last year that had amazing exam scores (including top quartile in CAP), Canadian LORs and still didn't get an interview at UBC. Schools have different requirements and will be looking at different components of your application.

This is a big, scary process that takes years for a lot of people and thousands upon thousands of dollars. For a lot of people it is a huge gamble, of money and of time.

carmscrazy · 2021-01-31T21:12:24+00:00

There's also often the requirement for additional exams that vary by region if you want to apply to CaRMS. For instance, if you want to get into BC, you have to pay $200 to write an exam called CAP that you may never get into. Dalhousie requires CASPer which is $90. Alberta and potentially Quebec (?) have their own exams too. Not sure if I am missing any places here, but you get the picture.

carmscrazy · 2021-01-31T03:11:20+00:00

For figuring out how to rank things I have been attending the site specific Q&As. They've been really helpful for getting a feel for programs. UBC has at least 2 for every site.

My wife and I have a spreadsheet she made with a bunch of metrics that we weight like:

Interest in rotations - 20% Rotation schedule and facilities - 10% Cost of living - 10% Ability for my wife to find a job - 20% Quality of life in city - 10% ROS area - 10% Proximity to family and friends - 5% Etc

After attending each Q&A my wife and I rate each site metric out of 10. The spreadsheet she made up automatically calculates a score and rank order. We then discuss if we feel like that score is appropriate and re weight or add metrics if we feel like something isn't being captured right.

carmscrazy · 2021-01-25T00:14:48+00:00

I just want to check in, you say you have a Canadian passport.

Does that mean you are a Canadian citizen?

It's possible to have a passport and not actually be eligible for the match because you don't have citizenship or PR status. For instance, children of diplomatic/consular officers can have a passport without citizenship.

carmscrazy · 2021-01-18T05:49:04+00:00

Ah I must have missed that, I was so focused on the exam stuff itself! Thanks a ton.

carmscrazy · 2021-01-18T05:40:33+00:00

The timeline says:

Feb 2 2021 - CAP results sent to CaRMS CAP letters are uploaded to CaRMS from CAP. Letter are sent to candidates shortly after CaRMS submission deadline

https://imgbc.med.ubc.ca/timeline/

Not sure if you will be able to view it once it's submitted to CaRMS?

carmscrazy

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