14 Doctors help 65 medical students find a career match

“So, did you always know you wanted to be a radiologist?” asks a first year Island Medical Program (IMP) student in Victoria “Hah, well, not exactly,” answers Dr Stuart Silver with a smile before continuing to share his own journey through medicine with an attentive audience. Dr Silver is one of 8 doctors of various specialties who recently shared an evening with IMP students to help them find the answer to that daunting question: what type of medicine do I want to practice?

Find Your Match was established by Doctors of BC to provide students with an opportunity they identified as lacking: the time and space to meet with doctors from a broad range of specialties to seek their advice, listen to their stories, and hear about their challenges and successes.  

Set up as an informal speed-dating style dinner event in which students sit at tables in small groups while doctors of varying specialties rotate around the room, Find Your Match makes it so doctors can easily speak about their specialty, their journey through medicine, the highs and lows of their careers, and answer questions students have about call schedules, lifestyle, and opportunity. 

Now in its fourth year, Find Your Match events were held this year in Prince George and Victoria. More than 65 students attended these two events, joined by seven doctors in Prince George and eight doctors in Victoria. Photos of both events can be found in our Photo Gallery, here.

Thanks go out to Resident Doctors of BC for providing second year pediatric resident Dr Paul D’Alessandro and second year Public Health and Preventive Medicine resident Dr Jesse Kancir to MC the Prince George and Victoria events respectively. They were engaging, informative, and could easily relate to the young students.  Doctors of BC is also grateful to the dedicated doctors who took time out of their busy schedules to mentor our doctors of tomorrow:

Physician participants

Find Your Match Prince George
Dr Alan Ruddiman, Family medicine
Dr Jacqueline Pettersen, Neurology
Dr Kirsten Miller, Pediatrics
Dr Brydon Blacklaws, Emergency medicine
Dr Floyd Besserer, Emergency medicine
Dr Michael Buchanan Internal medicine and Rheumatology
Dr Dmitri Zanozin, Psychiatry

Find Your Match Victoria
Dr Alan Ruddiman, Family medicine
Dr Jesse Pewarchuk, Internal Medicine
Dr Stuart Silver, Radiology
Dr Rod McFadyen, Emergency Medicine
Dr Erin Burrell, Psychiatry
Dr Joanna Cheek, Psychiatry
Dr James Graham, Obstetrics/gynecology
Dr Tom Ruta, Anesthesia

Doctors of BC supports our members from the beginning of their careers, throughout their life in medicine, and into retirement.