OMSA Leadership Day:

My day today was supposed to be focused on leadership training, and skills as well as preparing for the med student lobby day tomorrow at Queens Park. Instead half the day was spent on deciding what colour personality you are and what that means. In truth you are always a mix of these but apparently one usually dominates. I initially thought I might be red, but I am a True Blue. Try it for yourself: http://www.uta.edu/english/V/students/collab16/TESTPAGE.HTML.

Sadly, I think many students got confused about the issues and are going into their meeting with politicians really quite unsure of what to expect. Thankfully, I did this last year, am very familiar with the issues, and I am meeting with the same person again. I just felt that most of today was spent on irrelevant things and not properly preparing students for the lobby day.

The best part of the day was when they said maybe we should leave the CaRMS issue on the backburner. To this I had to raise my voice: Frankly we are going there talking about increasing the financial resources for med students and getting more people to apply from all demographic groups as well as repayment strategies, this cannot be done without thinking about the residency spots and the matching process at the end of one’s medical degree. I was glad that many students came up to me and agreed with me, we should use our time wisely but CARMS is NOT a backburner issue. Sadly, I think this comment is a reflection of the overwhelming pre-clerkship representation at the lobbying level and lack of representation from the last two years. I think I am only one of two or three clerks to be present tomorrow.

NB: For non-meds CaRMs is the matching process that medical students go through at the end of med school for residency programs.