Any aspiring doctor in Canada knows how competitive it is to get into med school. With a long list of course prerequisites and credit hours—on top of the minimal intake in North American schools—many Canadians are turning to post-graduate schools in the Caribbean to pursue their doctoral dreams.
Sights set on St. Maarten
“What we offer is a four-year MD program,” says Dr. Renu Agnihotri, president of theAmerican University of Integrative Sciences, St. Maarten School of Medicine (AUIS). “It is divided into two years of basic sciences and two years of clinical sciences.”
The program also has a huge North American presence. “Interestingly enough, about half of our students are Canadian,” says Dr. Agnihotri, adding that most students hear about the school through AUIS’s recruiters and website, referrals from peers, and word-of-mouth.
While most med schools in North America have classes of 200–300 students, AUIS strives to maintain much smaller classes with no more than 16 students. The smaller class sizes create an appeal for Canadians choosing to study in the Caribbean.
“What we’re striving to be is the Harvard of boutique medical schools in the Caribbean,” says Milo Pinckney, managing director at AUIS. “Our bottom line is that students travelling abroad to medical school becomes qualified candidates for a US or Canadian residency match, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Grad school in Grenada
Similar to AUIS, the medical curriculum at St. George’s University is a four-year program, with both onsite learning in Grenada and clinical training in North America. What’s also unique about the program is its studying opportunities in Newcastle, England.
“That program averages about 100 students per semester—out of that 100, 50–60 per cent is Canadian,” says Bob Ryan, associate dean of Enrolment Planning at St. George’s University. “They like the idea of studying in England; they like the idea of further exposing themselves to another country’s method of teaching and practicing medicine.”
And as medicine becomes more global, more Canadian students are finding themselves in classrooms outside North America. “With the mobility of the population and being able to travel from one end of the world to the other in one day really makes having that global medicine background beneficial,” says Ryan.
Naturally, North American students would be drawn to attending a school closer to home had they been accepted. But Ryan notes that this past year a number of students declined their seats at their local colleges and universities to study abroad at St. George’s.
The university is currently working on bringing more clinical opportunities to Canada. So far, St. George’s Canadian placements are only for electives—when students specialize in the medical field—which happens in the fourth year of the program.
Although implementing the clinical portion of the program to Canada is still a work-in-progress, St. George’s continues to promote the university to the Canadian market through transit and radio ads, as well as information sessions.
“Our biggest attraction is word of mouth. If students go in to see a doctor or are volunteering at a hospital, maybe the doctor is a St. George’s grad,” says Ryan. “I can stand in front of an audience and rattle off every stat, but if a graduate follows me you can see the students sitting at the edge of their seats. We really use our alumni extensively.”
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