Life has a way of throwing surprises in our paths, as it did two years ago to my husband and me. We were in our final year of medical school - him in Canada, and I at Duke-NUS. We'd planned for him to come to Singapore for residency, and hopefully finally close the chapter on our six-year long distance relationship. So it was a bit of a shock when we found that, due to a change in licensing requirements for Canadian students, this wouldn't work.
We thus found ourselves with two options: either we spend another five years apart while he completed residency in Canada, or I move to Canada for residency. It was the hardest decision I had ever made. But in the end, I decided to make the move to Canada. I soon learned that getting into Canadian residency isn't a walk in the park for international medical graduates (IMGs), with overall match rates of 5-10%. Given that much of my clinical experience had been in radiology, it was time to find an alternative specialty. I remembered how much I'd liked family medicine, and decided to spend a year working with a family physician in Victoria.
This turned out to be one of the best decisions I'd ever made, because after a bit of a learning curve I fell in love with it. There's a huge satisfaction in catching patients who fall through the cracks and turning their lives around. One elderly lady I'll never forget had poorly controlled asthma, for which she had been getting treatment at walk-in clinics because of a mistrust of family physicians. After spending many sessions with her, I managed to gain her trust and optimize her asthma treatment, renewing her conviction to stay with our family practice. I'll also remember the Malaysian Chinese breast cancer survivor, whom I helped overcome her fears of breast cancer monitoring. I'll never forget the sincere gratitude some patients showed, simply because I spoke Mandarin. Over the year, I built many incredibly fulfilling patient relationships, and when we finally had to move to another city, those patient relationships were one of the hardest things I had to leave behind.
My husband later matched to radiology in Saskatoon. So we packed our bags and, with his help, I started looking for new clinical opportunities. I soon realized that this wasn't a straightforward job - emails and phone calls would go unanswered; promising conversations would peter out. Clinical traineeships I had arranged would be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. It made me realize how hard the Duke-NUS staff worked, and how easy they made things for us students. Even after I had graduated, the Student Affairs staffs were incredible in helping me get registered in Canada, navigating the complicated system efficiently while meeting near-impossible deadlines.
Despite the initial challenges, the clinical opportunities I did secure more than made up for the effort. I discovered a love for teaching when I became a clinical tutor at the local college of medicine. I was also very lucky to work with excellent physicians, who enriched my learning and helped me immensely on my quest to residency. It was here that the clinical skills I had acquired from my various Duke-NUS tutors really came into their own. Many physicians I worked with gave very positive feedback; the GP I worked with in Victoria even said he had "all [his] misconceptions of IMGs shattered". I think it speaks volumes of the quality of education we get at Duke-NUS - it really is of world-class standards.
When my turn for the residency match came, I put in my applications and attended the interviews for family medicine. Then we settled down for a grueling wait, hoping that - despite some very steep odds - I'd match to where my husband was training. But life has a way of throwing surprises in our paths. On 1 March 2017, we finally received the news that I had matched to my first choice, Saskatoon's family medicine program. After six years of being apart and two years of sweat, tears, and fears, there aren't words to describe the immense relief and joy we felt.
I know that this is only the end of the beginning, but I'm grateful and eager to walk the road ahead. Looking back now, I'm really thankful for the continuous encouragement my mentors and peers have given me, and I'm glad I went ahead with that very difficult decision nearly two years ago: "I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference."
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