Glennie Lane (23) is a third year medical student from Saskatoon, Canada

How’s university life in Saskatoon?

It’s really fantastic. Saskatoon is a university city, so the city itself is really great and there is always something to do during the school year. University itself is really beautiful – all the buildings are quite old (for Canada) and most of the professors have been really great.

Is it financially possible for everyone to study medicine in Canada?
It definitely is possible for anyone to study medicine. We are all eligible for a Line of Credit from a bank – which means they give us 150’000$ dollars in the bank for us to use over 4 years. The thing is, is we make interest payments every month on the money we have used so far.

The difficulty is being able to pay for university before medicine. This is because you need at least 2 years of undergraduate education (95% of the population in medicine did at least 3 years). You also need to take 5 classes/30 credit units, so it is difficult to find time to work to finance yourself. Student loans given to undergraduate students are a lot less than those given to those in medicine. So basically – once you’re in medicine, it’s easy to pay! But paying for university beforehand is more difficult.

What do you think is the best part of the medical education in Saskatoon?

The best thing about my medical education is the small class size – my class is about 70, with the year above me being 60, and the 2 years below me being roughly 85 students. My year, despite the small increase in class size from the year before, is still small enough that we have plenty of one-on-one clinical teaching. We have clinical skills superior to most other schools by the time we reach our internship years. This proves invaluable when we are going to other universities on clinical electives.

You were involved in an IFMSA SCOPE internship in Ljubjlana, Slovenia. What do you think that is the biggest difference in study medicine in Canada and Slovenia?

In Slovenia residency training depends on the marks of the students. In Canada you get matched to a residency spot. You have to apply, with personal letters, reference letters and an interview. Then you ‘rank’ which school you want to go to; the schools then rank you. And, on one big day (“match day”), a computer program matches you to the residency program. This is a binding contract and you have to go. It is a ridiculous system but that’s the way it is! I also found clinical skills and the clinical experience better in Saskatoon – I was better in history taking and performing physical exams than the few Slovene students who were at a comparable stage in their education I met. However that could have just been the students I met.

Describe your life in 2020…

I love Saskatoon, but I hope to go somewhere else for my residency (I’m thinking General Internal Medicine or Neurology), such as Edmonton (university of Alberta) or somewhere east. So in 2016 I will be done training if I choose not to do a sub specialty (which is an extra 2 years). Whether I’ll be living in Saskatoon or the city in which I do my training is up in the air! However I assume that I will still be paying of my mounting student debt.