medical school

For physicians of my generation, many additional chapters in our medical careers have been written since chapter one, medical school. That opening chapter is somewhat of a fading vision. Not the knowledge part, thank goodness, but the circumstances under which that information was acquired and retained.

When discussing the distributed sites of the University of British Columbia’s Medical Undergraduate Program, people are generally focused on three areas of interest: the number of family doctors produced at the sites, the location in which graduates choose to practise, and the quality of the education graduates receive when learning somewhere other than the traditional medical boot camps of Vancouver. All of these issues are important and certainly deserve to be analyzed and discussed at length. However, as the old saying goes, if one focuses on the destination, the journey is missed. 

Every year for the past 17 years UBC medical and dental students have put on a spring gala to raise money for charity and showcase their talents. To show my support, I not only purchased a ticket, but got tickets for my whole family. By the end of the night, I turned to my mom and told her that maybe I shouldn’t have given up the violin lessons—maybe then I could have had something to contribute to this amazing event. 

“All of these students are either medical or dental students?” my sister asked.

“Yes, it’s amazing isn’t it?” I replied.

Brian Day suggests that Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI) used at UBC, Mc­Master University, and elsewhere are tantamount to kindergarten play [So you want to be a doctor? BCMJ 2011;53:389]. 

Moreover, his problematic argument indemnifies the use of MMI for the medical education system’s failure to educate all qualified candidates and the resulting short supply of physicians in Canada. These are two important but different points.