CaRMS 2024: a happy ending
Well, folks, it happened. The years-long épopée had ended on March 19th 2024. What a ride… Seeing how I’ve shared the outline of it and the first attempt, it seemed only fitting to tie up this loose end.
As any IMG attempting to regain their ability to practice this side of the pond, as well as any CMG for that matter, knows the Match cycle lasts almost a year from July to March. I’ve described it in detail in my first post. Here I’d like to share the differences now that I went through it wearing another hat, as it were.
As a medical student in Canada one starts the clinical part of their curriculum, or clerkship (named thusly, I would assume, cause everyone and their aunt are ordering you around) in the 3rd year. In my alma mater the majority of clinical disciplines are taught in blocks, or rotations of varied length. The obligatory core subjects such as internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics, family medicine, etc. last 2 months each. There are also a varied number of elective courses one might take to either explore an area of interest. After all, choosing the specialty is kind of important: no one wants to be stuck for decades, for instance, treating sick kids and, even less so, their parents, when dealing with elderly would have been a better fit.
It is also the time to do the rounds, as it were, to network and gather those much desired letters of recommendation. For CMGs those letters would be sent by the referee directly to CaRMS. Several of specialties now have a standardized letter form you can familiarize yourself with here, here and here.
Another thing that changed since my first attempt: family medicine programs no longer require Casper. Instead they want the applicants to do FMProC which is also a situational judgement test, but cheaper and not a typing contest as it has answer options to choose from. As with Casper the FMProC has a narrow window to have taken the test, so beware. Other than these few changes there’s not much difference in terms of documents.
The MSPR is produced and sent directly to CaRMS by the Dean’s office based on the final evaluations provided on each rotation that takes place before the submission deadline sometime in October. Lastly, one gets some help from one’s student office in document and interview prep.
The rest is more or less the same: know your CV, prepare for the interview with someone via video call for more realistic experience, and wear pants no matter how certain you are that there will be no need to get up. Good luck!
