As a student on a budget, I love the word free, so I took an inventory of what’s free out there for medical students. I knew that my Doctors of BC membership is free during my 4 years of medical school, but I had forgotten that this includes a free CMA membership, which means free access to handy resources such as RxTx and DynaMed Plus, not to mention various additional deals and discounts.
I knew that I received free life insurance with Doctors of BC through my 4 years of medical school as well, but as of the 2018–19 school year Doctors of BC disability insurance is also free through all 4 years. That’s saving me at least $925 in premiums!
I knew about the rural-rotation travel stipend of up to $800, but I almost forgot about the $250 weekly housing allowance for up to 8 weeks: all the more reason to do a rural elective in fourth year.
I knew that Doctors of BC provides some of the needs-based bursaries applied through the UBC Student Service Centre (up to $250 000 is donated each year), but I was not aware of other ways to win money. I could win a $1000 prize for submitting an article to the BCMJ, a $250 prize for writing a BCMJ blog post, a $5000 award for demonstrating interest in rural medicine, and a $1000 Changemaker Award for demonstrating leadership in advocacy.
Of course, Doctors of BC hosts the much-anticipated annual Backpack Day for first-year students, but this year I attended the other big (and arguably more important) annual event—Find Your Match, where I and other students got insider tips from physicians from various disciplines while enjoying a scrumptious, fully catered meal.
Free membership plus all those extras—that’s a lot of value.
—Jessie Wang
Medical Student Intern, Doctors of BC
Links
[1] https://bcmj.org/node/7130
[2] https://bcmj.org/author/jessie-wang
[3] https://bcmj.org/sites/default/files/BCMJ_Vol61_No2-news.pdf
[4] https://bcmj.org/print/articles/what-doctors-bc-does-me
[5] https://bcmj.org/printmail/articles/what-doctors-bc-does-me
[6] http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https://bcmj.org/print/articles/what-doctors-bc-does-me&via=BCMedicalJrnl&tw_p=tweetbutton&via=BCMedicalJrnl&tw_p=tweetbutton&via=BCMedicalJrnl&tw_p=tweetbutton&via=BCMedicalJrnl&tw_p=tweetbutton
[7] https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=What Doctors of BC does for me&url=https://bcmj.org/print/articles/what-doctors-bc-does-me&via=BCMedicalJrnl&tw_p=tweetbutton&via=BCMedicalJrnl&tw_p=tweetbutton&via=BCMedicalJrnl&tw_p=tweetbutton&via=BCMedicalJrnl&tw_p=tweetbutton&via=BCMedicalJrnl&tw_p=tweetbutton
[8] https://bcmj.org/javascript%3A%3B
[9] https://bcmj.org/modal_forms/nojs/webform/176?arturl=/articles/what-doctors-bc-does-me&nodeid=67
[10] https://bcmj.org/%3Finline%3Dtrue%23citationpop