Game Time: The CaRMS Interview

In CaRMS Guide, Mentorship by Brent Thoma8 Comments

This is part two of the CaRMS Trilogy and will focus on CaRMS interviews. See Pre-game: CaRMS Interview Preparation and Post-game: The CaRMS Rank List for discussion of other aspects of CaRMS and the full CaRMS Guide for the complete series of medical student mentorship posts. There are generally three parts to the CaRMS interview: the social, the tour, and the interviews. I can speak best to the FRCPC-EM tour because that is the one I …

Pre-Game: CaRMS Interview Preparation

In CaRMS Guide, Mentorship by Brent Thoma21 Comments

It’s that time of year again. The references are in, the applications are complete, interviews have been accepted, flights are booked and medical students across Canada are preparing themselves for the rigamarole known as CaRMS that will determine where they will be living for the next 2-5 years and what kind of medicine they will be practicing for the rest of their lives. All you can do now is some CaRMS interview preparation.

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Routes to emergency medicine practice following a Family Medicine residency

In CaRMS Guide by Gaibrie StephenLeave a Comment

Believe it or not, CCFP graduates provide the majority of emergency care in Canada. I don’t mean CCFP physicians with an emergency medicine (EM) designation – I’m referring to regular non-EM family physicians. From the very northern settlements of Canada to southern border cities, family physicians have been working in emergency departments since their earliest days in Canada. This begs the important question: what is the value added through a recognized college competency …

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FAQ About Medical Student Electives

In Mentorship by Brent Thoma5 Comments

This is a topic for which the “how to” seems to be passed down from senior to junior medical students and never written down. I remember being pretty clueless about this process when I went through it. I was a relative late-comer to the Royal College EM sweepstakes, having decided to pursue that program only during the summer before fourth year. This was compounded by my inability to plan anything in advance, ever. I …

An Approach to Palliative Care in the ED

In Medical Concepts by Brent Thoma18 Comments

Palliative care is “the prevention and relief of suffering.” Given how much suffering that we see in the ED, emergency medicine physicians should have a working knowledge of some of the key skills in this specialty: managing pain and symptoms, delivering bad news, and helping families to make difficult decisions. These are three things that we do on a daily basis and could likely improve upon with increased focus.