Do you know where you’re going to?

Supporting medical students throughout their journey – as they choose their road and follow it – is a priority for Doctors of BC. The health of our profession depends on physicians being happy in, and well suited to, the specialty they choose. 

An annual event we hold is Find Your Match for second year medical students. It is hosted in a format similar to “speed dating” with food and drinks because it’s supposed to be fun! Physicians from various specialties rotate from table to table to inform students about the best and worst things about the specialty they chose – hopefully influencing some keen young doctors over to their area of interest. As President, this year I had the privilege of attending Find Your Match in both Vancouver and Kelowna. Between the two events, we had 140 medical students and 18 physicians representing Family Medicine, General Surgery, Anaesthesia, Emergency Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Psychiatry and Internal Medicine. 

This event is an energizing experience for the physician preceptors, and one that is greatly appreciated by the students. Hopefully the information they walk away with will help them in their decision making – although one student told me he changed his mind every time a new doctor came to the table because we were all so enthusiastic about the work we do. I want to particularly thank my colleagues who took time out of their evening to be part of this event, I think everyone felt it was time well spent.

Another related event is the CaRMS Match Day event held in Vancouver. This is the outcome of student choices – the celebrations of the students who successfully match to their residency of choice in CaRMS round 1. The excitement is always palpable. A few do not achieve the program they desire, but will hopefully find unexpected opportunities in the road ahead. 

Today medical students must choose their path early in the careers – much earlier than many of us did. In 1993, the one-year rotating internship was eliminated, and the process changed from a single exit point from medical school to multiple potential options – and a residency program lasting anywhere from two to five years. There were many reasons for this change; however, the immediate result was the loss of one year’s entire graduating cohort into the medical workforce. In my world, the reliable supply of locums that consisted of newly qualified physicians still exploring their career options disappeared. In the medical student world, they were forced to decide and apply to the residencies of their choice at the end of third year, long before exposure to much of the variety of clinical medicine. 

Since then, many attempts have been made to expose students to options earlier so they are not choosing blindly. But the reality is that students still feel pressured to choose early, and experience considerable stress about making the “right” choice. After all, this decision will affect the entire future of one’s working life. And this combined with the increasing scarcity of adequate residency positions, the difficulty in changing direction if you decide you have chosen the wrong field and the considerable stress of just surviving academically and personally in medical school, it’s no wonder we see increasing rates of burnout, depression and even suicide among trainees.

These are only a few of the reasons why events such as Find Your Match are important – and why Doctors of BC will continue to help inform medical students about all of the options available to them long before they are forced to choose their pathway. 

So to all our students I wish you the ability to choose wisely, the energy to survive the process and a lifetime of satisfaction in medicine. I also offer congratulations to all of those starting on the next stage of your journey.