Canadian medical student's success story - Rebecca Bremner, MD - Part 1

Rebecca Bremner, MD, a Canadian resident discusses why she chose the University of Medicine and Health Sciences and how she was able to return to Canada and begin practice as a Hospitalist/Family Medicine Physician. I'm Scott Harrah, Director of Digital Content at UMHS. As part of our UMHS Alumni Achiever series, we're speaking today with Canadian UMHS grad Dr. Rebecca Bremner. Dr. Bremner is a family medicine physician who completed her family medicine residency at Louisiana State University in Bogalusa, Louisiana. After graduating from UMHS and also after completing her undergrad at Ontario Institute of Technology, Dr. Bremner has now returned to her native Canada to practice family medicine. We're here today to learn more about how UMHS helped her on her journey to becoming a doctor. Dr. Bremner, good morning and welcome today. Scott H: Dr. Bremner, what about your medical education at UMHS helped you get where you are today? Dr.Bremner: I would say the number of experiences that everything has come with studying abroad has really helped shape who I am as a person right now. To be quite honest, prior to going to Saint Kitts for med school, I had never flown before. The only reason I had ever really left Canada was to go on the odd shopping trip to upstate New York. It really helped me grow as a person and to come out of my shell, definitely, put me in certain instances where I maybe didn't feel comfortable. But I think that ultimately that helped me grow as a person. Just the number of different places I've lived/the number of cultures that I've experienced has really helped me grow as a physician because we deal with people of all walks of life. I'm able to just wrap all of that into when I'm having interactions with patients on how to handle different things. Scott H: Speaking to both current and prospective students, what would you say are some of the best things about UMHS being a UMHS graduate back practicing in Canada? The one thing, thinking back to basic sciences, and I would attribute to my success is the quality of the professors that we had. The way that our professors teach, I think, is different from if I had stayed here in Canada and gone to medical school. Some things are self-taught here. I don't think that would have been a successful strategy for me. The fact that the professors just lay out all of the information in a super easy-to-understand way, and if you don't understand, that's okay because they have tons of time where you're able to access them in their office hours and things like that. I think basic sciences helped me develop the basic knowledge I needed to succeed. Then, just the number of different clinical experiences that I had. In medicine, if you're staying in one hospital setting and dealing with the same attendings time and time over, you may not be able to... The way I've chosen how to practice medicine: I've picked and chosen from all the different doctors I've worked with, things that I liked that they did, or maybe things that I didn't like that I made sure I would never do again. With all of the moving that I did, even though it, at times, was a little challenging to find housing and things like that, I'm really thankful for all the different physicians that I worked with in terms of my clinical rotations to help me just figure out how I want to practice medicine. Scott H: Okay, great. Is there anything about UMHS that you think is particularly appealing for Canadian students studying medicine abroad, besides the obvious things like the great weather in Saint Kitts? Dr. Bremner: The difficult thing, of course, is always getting a residency to make sure that you're able to become Board Certified. In choosing a Caribbean school, you need to make sure that you're going somewhere reputable that has good rapport with different residency programs so that you have that opportunity to match and to be able to be board certified. I only applied to one Caribbean school, and it was UMHS. Thankfully, I got in. It led to where I'm at today. But I think the fact that UMHS is so reputable that the Ross family has a really good background in terms of making sure that their students succeed is how I ultimately chose this school. - Chapters - 00:00 Start 00:51 How did UMHS help you become a Medical Doctor? 02:07 Best things about UMHS for Canadian medical Students 02:20 Great professors at UMHS 04:05 How is UMHS appealing to Canadian Med Students? Please check out our medical school overview page here: https://www.umhs-sk.org/caribbean-medical-schools Please watch our playlist about Canadian Med Students and their success at UMHS on our playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7_-WDU1Vnt2J4_h9EARzDRi9_a8CWZpy Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrk0x4lh5OkYnAHpzgYjcUw?sub_confirmation=1

from University of Medicine and Health Sciences https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SQ1Y018t0A
via UMHS YouTube Channel

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dr. Michael McCullagh '19 on Family Med & Hospitalist Residency in Arizona

Non-Traditional Medical Students FAQs: Virtual Townhall