Non academic score

I received the following question from a reader:

any tips for getting a high naq score?

my naq activities include :

• 2 publications (student journal + canadian pharmacist journal)


• med ssrp (summer research)


• clinical work (pharmacy student at shoppers drug mart)


• played soccer for 10 years (community soccer)


• old folks' home volunteering


• ...i go to the gym...

cheers, [sender]

what were your naq activities?

This question is probably of interest to some more of you, so I'll jog down some of my thoughts on this topic.

First, before I try to answer this big question, let me say this:  NAQ score is very important for some schools, so good for you for wanting to work on it! A friend of mine who applied with me last year had a stunning GPA (~95%) and MCAT (~40), which were much better than my slightly-above-average academic record, but his NAQ was quite lacking. He didn't volunteer or join clubs or such. The only thing he could write about was playing on an intramural sports team. As a result, he did not even get an interview at some particular schools. (Although he had no trouble getting into some other ones, which are said to focus more heavily on academics.)

Tip 1: find your passion

Now, I believe that people do well when they do what's interesting to them, not when they are trying to impress someone or ramp up a mysterious score that no one knows much about. Once they focus their energy on the things that they enjoy, what's left is just the presentation of their experiences on paper. Of course, they can probably pull it off when they do something that's not their biggest passion, but when it's time to write about their experiences, it would be difficult for them to compete, on paper, with others who did the same stuff with real passion.

Of course, I don't mean if your passion is watching TV, you should watch TV all day. Watching House does not count as showing passion for medicine. What I mean is, if you enjoy working with kids, you should volunteer/work for a summer camp rather than in a hospital. If you enjoy community projects, you shouldn't force yourself to stay in a lab. If you enjoy soccer, play it till you are at the highest level of competition you'd like to be. Don't try to guess what the admission committee wants. Know what you want.

Tip 2: be referenceable

You pretty much need a reference for anything you say on the application. If you like jogging, join a group. Better, lead a team at a jogging event/fundraiser. If you like a sport, play on a team. If you are into arts/music, then join a club, win a competition, or do a project that involves your talent. If the only person knows what you did is your mom, it could be difficult to use on an application.

Tip 3: know your weakness and work on it

It's no a secret what categories each med school is looking for. Some common items include: community services, leadership, extracurricular experiences such as arts and sports. Some schools may actually specifically ask for experiences in rural or aboriginal communities especially if the provincial climate demands it.

There is a lot of room to interpret each heading, and not all headings need to be filled. But if you find yourself severely lacking in many of these categories, perhaps you should consider strengthening them. In general, a good balance between school work, community service, research, sports, creative pursuits, etc. would only work to your benefit.

So, if you feel that the tips above are nice and all, but completely useless because you only have 6 months to finish your application, here's

Tip 4: sell yourself like you mean it

There is no room to down play the significance of your experiences. No matter how you might feel about them (I always feel shamefully inadequate whenever I have to write an application or a resume), you must present your stuff with confidence and passion. Don't just list what you did, describe how well you did or what you've learned. Use specific examples to back up what you claim. If you learned the importance of empathy, how did you learn this? If you thrived in the face of great challenge, how did you do that?

Tip 5: get help if you need it

It's worthwhile to have your application/resume/essay reviewed by someone with an objective eye. Friends and family are a good start, but sometimes you need a Simon Cowell to get the job done. I've worked with the Career Services at my school before as a resume reviewer, and I know they offer phenomenal help students in terms of career advise and resume review. I'm sure other schools have similar services. If you have a mentor in a professional field/academia/industry/or wherever else who can speak to reviewing an application, feel free to ask them for their advise as well.

In terms of the last question regarding my naq activities, let me just say that I am not a varsity athelete, I'm not musically or artistically talented. I have no publications, and I haven't volunteered outside my community. I'm just a regular guy doing regular things. But I'm happy to say, more often than not, I do them with a passion :)

A few more thoughts for interviewees

Just held another interview practice for 2 interviewees tonight. This was the first session that I asked for a participation fee because I am starting to shift my private tutoring hours from HS students to premeds. With my previous experience with 18 participants, tonight's session was a lot easier to manage.

At the session, I collected some tips that I think would be useful for most interviewees, so I'll share them here:

1. Use the 2 minutes of reading the prompt to first identify the points you want to cover and formulate a strong opening statement. I find that many interviewees start their answer a bit shakily, only to gain confidence about 30 seconds into the answering period. If they had a simple, strong opening statement, I could follow their thoughts more easily and I generally ended up being more impressed than someone who gave basically the same answer but with a poor opening. Compare the following two openings:
   
   
   
   1. "I think the statement... I think there are a few things that one must consider in this situation... The statement asks about the issue of confidentiality, which I think is very important..."
   
   
   2. "In dealing with the issue of confidentiality, there are several conflicting interest involved. Foremost, the patients trust doctors with their private information... However, infectious diseases pose a threat to the public's interest... To resolve this conflict, I believe..."


2. Always introduce yourself! Depending on your comfort level, you could shake hands with the interviewer and give a big smile. For some people, that will do wonders to calm their nerves. For some, it's more straightforward to stick to business and go right into the question. But whatever your style, remember that a positive first impression wins you half the battle.


3. Demonstrate empathy whenever possible. I wrote briefly about the acting stations in this post, but I'd like to add a few basic skills of empathy so that people have a more concrete idea of what this means.
   
   
   
   1. If you can identify the emotion, identify it! If the person looks depressed, say something like: "you look like you are feeling depressed, would you like to talk about it?"
   
   
   2. Ask plenty of questions. "What's bothering you?" "Has this feeling affected your day-to-day functioning?"
   
   
   3. Appropriate physical contact is fine. Pads on the shoulder is a pretty direct way to show comradeship if done appropriately. Don't force it if you don't feel comfortable.
   
   
   4. Empathy doesn't have to be limited to acting stations! There are lots of situations where an understanding of people's emotions is crucial for a full appreciation of the situation. Ethical dilemma? What emotions could be present on either side of the table?

These tips are pretty general, but I think many people can benefit from them. Of course, a better way would be to practice with someone who can give you specific feedback.

Good luck, get some rest, and take care of yourself! You want to run at 100% capacity and only a good life style can help you do that.

"Doctor's note" scenario - discussion

Here's a reader's question regarding the practice prompt I posted: "Doctor's note".

I have a questions for you about our stations. For Station 3 about the child's note, I was just wondering whether I had gone off on a tangent ... I spent a lot of time explaining to the interviewer how I would: communicate with my son in order to understand why he was telling me he was sick; explain to him the value of the physicians note; and then, if after my discussion with him about responsibility, he still doesn't admit to the truth, I would suggest that we go to our family doctor to get one.

My station interviewer said that my response was mostly based on how I felt but didn't include any "logic" whereby logic would include things such as the impact of giving the fake note and the public's perception of this action by a physician.

So, I was hoping to get your thoughts.  When I first read this question, I think I took it quite literally as in explain how I would deal with this (communication-wise) but it seems that it could also be a question about ethics (would you or would you not give the note and why or why not). Did I miss the point here? And if I did, do you have any suggestions on how I could read these prompts so that I will not miss the boat again? :P

And here's my reply:

It seems like you answered this question quite well until you said you would get a fake note for your son, and your interviewer was quite right to point out the ethical considerations in this situation. Besides honesty and professional integrity being very important for a physician, the public's trust in the profession being jeopardized, getting a fake note for your son is almost certainly detrimental to his character in the long run.

You didn't go off topic if you tackled this scenario as a communication challenge, but like in any other scenarios, ethical considerations must be addressed whenever warranted. The same goes to acting stations, stations that ask about your personal experience, stations about health care... almost any question asks you, explicitly or implicitly, to evaluate right and wrong.

So my answer to you would be: in the 2 minutes that you have to prepare your thoughts, brainstorm all the things you must consider -- who's interest is involved? What ethical aspects are at play? How are you going to deliver your message? Why may someone disagree with you?

I hope this would help :)

[MMI prompt] Doctor's note

You are a family physician. One of your patients, Mark, did not attend one of his classes and missed an important exam. He told you that his teacher would like a doctor's note explaining his absence from class; otherwise, he will receive zero, and all hell will break loose. He wants to you write a note for him, indicating that he was not feeling well enough to write the exam. Not able to find any physical symptoms, explain how you would deal with this.

Some follow up questions:

1. What if Mark told you that he wasn't really sick, but he really really needed your note?


2. What if Mark was your son? What must you consider in this case?

5 principles of Canadian health care

I remember I used to be most intimidated by mmi questions related to Canadian health care... I just don't know much about it! I knew that there's this card that I need to bring to see a doctor, and if I tell my dentist that I am a university student with insurance through the school I can pay less money. Beyond that, I really had no clue.

That's why I'm so impressed by a participant at last night's practice mmi. He shared a way to systemically tackle questions related to Canadian health care. Namely, by addressing the "5 principles":

• public administration,


• comprehensiveness,


• universality,


• portability, and


• accessibility

To borrow the summary from the The New Press, they mean:

1. Public administration avoids the profiteering and thus the additional 20-30 percent overhead and profit associated with for-profit insurance companies. As with US Medicare the overhead for public health insurance is much less—4-5 percent.


2. Comprehensiveness means all necessary services are covered. Unless everything is covered, potential savings are lost if patients delay preventative care or necessary care as a result of financial concerns.


3. Universality means everyone is covered. Covering everyone allows allocation of resources based on need of the community rather than profitability. This kind of allocation of dollars allows for long range goals and planning improving the health of a neighborhood, a community, a city, a state, a nation.


4. Portability means you can take it with you. US citizens stay in unwanted jobs just to keep their health insurance. Reduced productivity of people who hate their jobs can stagnate an economy. Canadians are free to follow their dreams, because coverage is guaranteed.


5. Accessibility means freedom from economic, geographic and bureaucratic barriers to health care.

Try to apply these principles when answering this question:

"How would the 2010 Winter Olympics affect the health care of BC residents?"

[MMI prompt] Unprofessional colleague + tips for acting stations

I helped out at a practice interview session organized by a friend of mine tonight. It was a great success! I hope to replicate the organization and success with those of you who signed up in time, but we shall see how it turns out :)

I wrote this scenario for the acting station of tonight's practice:

You are a 3rd year medical student doing hospital rotations. A fellow medical student who is doing rounds with you often show up to these sessions tired, messy, hungover, or even drunk. One day you found him in the lunch room unaccompanied, so you decided to talk to him. Please enter the lunch room.

As we discussed earlier, the key to success for this type of stations is to go in with an open mind and let the troubled character in the situation tell his/her story first before you move onto. As I acted, I was looking for some "right questions" such as "I've noticed that you are often really tired, are you stressed?" or "is there a reason why you started drinking so heavily?" from the interviewees for me to go on to reveal the back story:

On the surface, he is a party-goer who risks patients' safety for his personal enjoyment/intoxication. When questioned, he initially provides irresponsible answers such as: "I just like to get drunk", "I like meeting girls at clubs and telling them I'm going to be a doctor", "I can perform in the hospital just fine even if I had a few drinks". And he can get defensive "what do you care?"

But upon persistent and nonjudgmental questioning (otherwise stay defensive till the end), he reveals that he is unsure of the career in medicine and doesn't want to quit but really isn't enjoying what he is doing. Lots of stress resulted from this internal conflict, which pushed him to escape by going to parties and forgetting about his worries. His grades, relationship with family and friends, and health are all suffering.

Some people started on the wrong foot and began to lecture too early ("You shouldn't be drinking so much, it's bad for the patients"), but most people were able to suspend their judgment and focus on helping the colleague. Some did better and invited him to share the reasons behind his drinking problems. This requires some empathy skills (watching out for the colleagues' posture, emotions, key words like "drinking takes my worries away"), and some listening skills.

Some things that were well-done by the participants tonight, in point form:

• suggested career counselling. Never offer advise that you are not trained to give like "maybe you should drop out of med school"


• encouraged colleague to reflect on what brought him into medicine in the first place,


• listed motivations to get help with drinking problems, such as a better controlled life-style, patients' safety, and the public impression of the medical profession,


• opening with "do you have a minute? I have something I'd like to talk to you about",

Some things I would suggest to everyone facing questions like this:

• ask lots of questions, don't rush to provide answers before you get the complete picture;


• referral when appropriate;


• relax!


• some lecturing is called for in this situation.

Even the best participants tonight could do better with the last point: there is a hard message that you should give your colleague -- drinking is not acceptable when you are acting as a health professional in a hospital. The key is to build understanding and trust with the colleague first before you deliver this message, through listening, empathy, and the above-mentioned good stuff.

Once you've shown that you understand your colleague and is interested in helping him with his concerns, you can say something like this:

"As your colleague, I have to tell you that you really need to address the drinking issue. This is for your own benefit as well as everyone around you, because this will help you find a lifestyle that you can enjoy and help your patients receive the care that they need."

[MMI prompt] Public health

Do you think general practitioners have an obligation to report their patients' health status to a public health agency, if their patients have active infectious diseases?