UBC 2008 CaRMS results

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 50, No. 8, October 2008, Page 437 Letters
By: Kristin Sivertz, MD, FRCPC Bruce Fleming, MD

As a follow-up to our theme issue from September 2008, we would like to provide BCMJ readers with our UBC class of 2008 CaRMS results.

The success of the expanded medical program would not occur without the commitment of physicians throughout BC who have helped to train our medical students. Students will always be grateful for the example and wisdom they have gained from their teachers.

The 2008 class was both the largest and the first distributed MD undergraduate class to graduate from UBC. This marks an important milestone not only for our first graduating class, but also for our expanded and distributed MD undergraduate program and postgraduate programs as well as our partner universities and health authorities.

The UBC Faculty of Medicine Evaluation Studies Unit monitors quality and comparability across sites, and tracks student progress from admission to professional practice. Their study of the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) results and statistics reaffirm that UBC students in the Vancouver Fraser Medical Program, Island Medical Program, and Northern Medical Program are competitive in a wide variety of disciplines across the country.

After the second iteration of CaRMS, 99.5% of all our students who participated matched to a residency program. Students matched to 19 disciplines in 12 Canadian faculties of medicine. Of the 193 matched students, 77 (40%) matched to residency programs in family medicine. Sixty percent, or 116 of the 193 students, matched to residency programs at UBC.

Island Medical Program (IMP) students matched to 10 disciplines; Northern Medical Program (NMP) students matched to 6 disciplines, and Vancouver Fraser Medical Program (VFMP) students matched to 18 disciplines.

It gives us great pleasure to see that 70% of Northern Medical Program graduates matched to family medicine residency programs, as well as specialty programs like the new UBC psy­chiatry residency program in Prince George.

Another milestone will be in 2010, when family medicine residents from the class of 2008 will complete their training and choose the communities they will practise in. We hope to then welcome many of them to communities in BC.
Our clinical teachers throughout the province have every reason to take pride in our collective achievements.

—Kristin Sivertz, MD
—Bruce Fleming, MD

Kristin Sivertz, MD, FRCPC, Bruce Fleming, MD. UBC 2008 CaRMS results. BCMJ, Vol. 50, No. 8, October, 2008, Page(s) 437 - Letters.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply