I don't see there being any huge gaps in the UBC Med
program, but then again, I've only completed one out of the four years.I'll try to address your points sequentially.
I think it is important to remember that this incoming
class of 2004 will be the fourth class under the new
program. Should you be entering as the class of 2005,
there will have been four generations of students
ahead of you, and consequently four years of
continuous adjustments and improvements.
Regarding funding cuts, I don't think there is a
university in Canada that has not suffered in this
respect. Just for an example, you note that that
UBC's Anatomy Labs have taken a dramatic loss in
funding. This year, there were eight students
assigned to each cadaver, and there were many
prosections available for study. Contrast that with U
of Calgary, which relies solely on prosected material.
In second year, there is expected to be a significant
drop in the number of available prosections, which
could cause a problem, or it will simply force
students to prepare earlier before labs, and to be
more careful while dissecting cadavers.
The last point, regarding UBC's standing compared to
other Canadian medical schools. I just returned from
Quebec, where I met up with a second year McGill
medical student. He and I are both close to the same
minds on this issue. Simply, the first two years or
so of medical education can be learned anywhere. What
you are doing is covering the basic physiology,
anatomy, and pathology of the human body, and how it
reacts to drugs and micro-organisms. That material
doesn't change as you cross the border to another province.
Therefore, the measure for learning in the first two
years is yourself. The medical school's influence on
your ability to master the material is not that great.
In the third and fourth years, you are learning
clinical material. Here, it's crucially important
that you are educated in a state of the art facility,
as the skills you learn here will be used throughout
residency and your practice. In this case, living in
a major metropolitan city like Vancouver is a huge
advantage. There's more specialists, a very diverse
population base, and no other local medical schools to
compete for training opportunities.
Strengths and weaknesses are something I can't really
comment on as this is the only program with which I've
had any experience. I will say that at UBC, I saw my
first patient within two weeks, which pretty much sums
up the program here. The entire program is oriented
towards learning clinically-relevant information.
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