Matching to a derm residency - the Canadian perspective

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spf2010

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Hi everyone,

I am a Canadian medical student that matched to a Canadian dermatology program earlier this week, and I am so elated to be joining such a wonderful profession! I wanted to write this because the fundamentals for matching to a Canadian program are quite different than a US program (from what I read), and wanted to put some info out there for any Canadian medical students in this forum, or just for American medical students/residents' general interest.

Some background: This year, there are 10 schools offering dermatology programs, 3 of them French-speaking, and there are 23 spots available (17 English-speaking, 6 French-speaking). Applicants generally have a 50% success rate of matching into dermatology, although I think that number has risen in recent years with more spots. Dermatology programs are 5 years long, with the core dermatology years being the latter 3 years.

Major differences between Canadian and American applications:

1) LESS EMPHASIS ON GRADES/NO AOA
We do not have to write the USMLE or anything equivalent, so the schools don't have any standardized exam information. We also don't have AOA, so no pre-screening of applications this way. Most medical schools in Canada are operated on a pass/fail basis, so unless an applicant has won the top academic award, there is no way of distinguishing the applicant based on his/her grades. Of course, the gold medallist (highest marks in the class) will stand out, but as long as the applicant doesn't fail anything, someone who is well below average is not disadvantaged in this application process.

2) MORE EMPHASIS ON AWAY ROTATIONS
So if not grades, what do they consider? Yes, getting to know the department on away rotations! There are only 7 programs (for us non-French fluent folk- and last year while setting up electives there were only 5) so it is not difficult to arrange 2-4 week rotations at multiple programs. In fact, many programs will not extend you an interview if you do not complete an elective there. There is emphasis on personality and whether you would get along well with the team there. This is much easier to assess over the course of 2 weeks actually working with the team than over the course of a half hour interview!

Away rotations are obviously your opportunity to show off. Because of this, there were some applicants that instead spent their summers shadowing dermatologists instead of doing research (see #4 below) because then they would be that much more confident diagnosing all the rare conditions when it came time to shine on these aways. But really - at most programs I got the impression that a personality that meshes well with the team >>> someone who is brilliant and has memorized Bolognia as a medical student.

3) NO RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS
To Canadians, fellowships are what are completed AFTER residency in the subspecialty area of choice. Students do not routinely take a year off after 3rd or 4th year before applying to do dermatology research.

4) LESS EMPHASIS ON DERMATOLOGY RESEARCH?
Research, presentations at conferences and publications almost seem like a must in order to equalize everyone in the US, whereas here (of the applicants I am familiar with) less than half of the applicants this year had any dermatology research presented at a major conference or published. There are some others that had research in other areas, or were MD/PhD's, but they did not have any dermatology-specific research.

Yes - definitely two different ways of selecting future dermatologists, probably each with their pros and cons, but in the end we all end up writing and passing the same exams (we routinely write the American boards too).

I hope this is helpful to some, or at least enlightening to a few while anxiously waiting for US match results! Best of luck! questions? comments? Any Canadians want to chime in?

spf2010

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Excellent summary. Thank you very much. This post should be stickied.
 
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