Steven Wharry is an associate editor in the CMA's Publications Department.
Canadian Medical Association Journal 1995; 153: 1640
[résumé]
Every summer, medical students from Prince Edward Island get the chance to do some real doctoring, courtesy of the provincial government and the PEI Medical Society (PEIMS).
Thanks to physicians who donate their time and energy, four second-year medical students take a whirlwind tour of medical specialties from mid-June until late August each year. The program is timely because students now often have to choose their area of specialization early in their last year at medical school, or even sooner. Participants routinely heap praise on the program -- one comment was that weeks spent with a general practitioner helped to "revolutionize my view of family medicine."
"Students are now being asked to choose their career path very early in their studies and this program helps them make that decision by giving them a taste of what each field is like," says Marilyn Lowther, executive director of the PEIMS. She helped develop the summer program. Students who apply to participate are chosen at random. First-year students can be selected if there are not enough qualified second-year applicants. However, a shortage of interested students is rarely a problem.
"We always have more applicants than jobs," says Lowther. "We even have students from other provinces saying they want in, but we limit entry to students from the Island."
The program lasts 10 weeks, during which students spend 1 week each in radiology, general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, laboratory medicine and community health. A week is also spent in two different rural family practices.
Lowther says the PEIMS considers the program an important way to keep in contact with doctors of the future and encourage them to return to PEI to practise. "These are the future members of the profession," she adds. "If you're not communicating with them, they're going to think you don't care."
Tracy Callaghan, a third-year student at Dalhousie University, participated in the 12-year-old program in 1995. It is "excellent," she says, because it allows students to gain hands-on experience.
"This is a model program for other medical societies to follow," says Callaghan. "It shows me that the PEIMS has an interest in medical students and that the society is doing its best to represent our interests."
The only cost of the program, which is funded by the province, is the $2500 each student receives as payment for the "summer job." While participating, students report to physicians such as Dr. Terence Verma, a family physician at the O'Leary Medical Centre who has been a volunteer participant since the program began.
"Students tend to be more scientifically oriented than patient oriented," comments Verma. "They have to learn there is more to treating patients than scientific research."
By spending time in rural areas such as O'Leary, where the medical centre serves a catchment area of about 9000 people, students get the chance to interact more with the patients they see.
"People often need the reassurance of a human touch and that is lacking a bit in the training students get in larger centres," he explains. "Often a patient is more concerned with other factors than just receiving treatment. They want to know how long the pain will last. They want to know if they will be able to easily swallow the medication they need. Often they want nothing more than the reassurance that they will be all right."