More resident positions needed say medical students
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* Laura Eggertson
* Barbara Sibbald

Seventy-seven anglophone medical school graduates are without a residency position following the first round of the 2005 residency match, underlining the need for more positions, says the Canadian Federation of Medical Students.

Many of these students will go to the US or other countries, “rather than settling for a residency in a field they aren't interested in,” says CFMS President Ashley Waddington.

“By not providing an adequate number of residency training positions we are squandering our investment in these young doctors,” says Waddington, a second-year student at McMaster University in Hamilton.

The CFMS wants 120 residency positions for every 100 students.This year's ratio was about 106:100.

The number of Enlgish-language residency positions increased this year to 1508, up from 1404 last year. There were 1428 applicants this year.

The Ontario government is adding 150 new family medicine spots. Waddington says this is “encouraging.”

First-round results from the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) show 109 of 165 residency positions that remained vacant were in family or rural family medicine. CaRMS expects most of those to be filled after the second round on April 13.

Results indicate 28% of students graduating from Canada's 13 English-language medical schools made family medicine their first career choice, up from 26% in 2004. But the College of Family Physicians of Canada says this is still inadequat, given that more than 3 million Canadians do not have a family doctor.

After the first match round, 15 positions also remained vacant in psychiatry, another specialty where pending retirements have placed pressure on existing practitioners to meet patient needs.

In Quebec, 26 specialist positions remain unfilled after the first round. In all, there are 610 residency positions at the 3 French-language medical schools and McGill University.

Twenty-three of the unfilled positions were in intenal medicine. Michel Giguere at the Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec says these vacancies are likely due to new regulations making it more difficult for residents to move from internal medicine to subspecialties.