Irish Med and FM?

[Jloyay]

I am a Canadian who was offered a place at the University College Cork's Medical school for 4 years which offers an MB BCh BAO degree and I was wondering how hard it would be to match to family medicine in 4 years time (either Canada or the United States) when I graduate assuming I do above-average on the USMLE steps and the board exams and get above-average grades? I'm also planning to do some of my later year electives back in Canada.

I don't mind the location, as long as I get a spot in residency. I've been hearing horror stories about many IMGs not getting spots in residency (I've also heard that those are just for more competitive specialties like IM and anesthesia is that true?) and I'm not sure if I can wrap my head around getting $250K into debt if I can't have a decent chance of matching.

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[DrMidlife]

Matching in Canada is a completely different story than in the US, and I think you're asking for Canada-specific info. Correct?

 

[Mad Jack]

Canada will generally approve visa waivers for Canadian IMGs to study in the United States in the more in-need specialties like FM, from what I've gathered. Too lazy to dig up old threads on it though, but I know it has been discussed in the past.

 

[heybert]

I'm at a different university in Ireland and most of our Canadians who applied to FM in Canada and the US matched. I think we had five match to Canada for the 2 year FM programs and two match to the US at great programs.

FM is one of the most popular specialities among Irish IMG graduates. If you work hard in medical school, get plenty of north american electives and do well on your exams FM is well within any candidate's reach (as are most other specialities - we had people match to Neuro, Ortho , PM&R, Internal and Anaesthesia this year).

 

[heybert]

Ways to not get a residency as an Irish IMG:

• Fail board exams or do poorly on them (same with EE and NAC OSCE)
• Do little in terms of extra curricular: research, volunteer work etc
• Do few electives
• Be a pain in the ass on electives
• Poor match strategy (applying to too few programs is the big one)
• Being an ass on interviews

Avoid all that and you have a great shot!