Hamilton

This week I was in Hamilton visiting McMaster University where they have the Mohawk programme. This degree in Radiation Therapy differs significantly from the Michener programme as the students are able to select direct from high school to enter into the medical sciences course. This year they had 600 students apply for the 150 places, so competition is high. They attribute this partly to the excellent marketing they receive at a grassroots level, but also to the name of the course, by having 'medical' the course seems to gain the precedence it deserves. After a year of the medical sciences course students then specialise into a specialist stream:
- Radiation therapy (only a cohort size of 24 students)
- Radiography
- Ultrasound
By doing this the students do have a chance during year 1 to become fully informed regarding the 3 disciplines and this seems to ensure students are able to make informed decisions. It became apparent as well that when students started the medical sciences course they were doing so to study radiography or ultrasound as they had never heard of radiation therapy, however when it came to choosing, more students apply to do radiation therapy than the other two specialism. Adopting this strategy in the UK would require a huge change in practice, however it does appear to be a successful strategy in reducing attrition within the specialism as there appears to only be the loss of students in the first year. They certainly don't observe the issues we sometimes see with students having made the wrong career choice and switching between the health care courses offered.
It was also incredibly interesting to see the competition for the radiation therapy course being so high and as a result of this only the most academically advanced students get selected. As McMaster don't have interviews this could be a risky strategy to adopt as from experience academia doesn't always translate into an excellent radiotherapy student due to the skills required in clinical. When discussing this with the lecturers it did become apparent that they do quite often have to provide extra support sessions for students who struggle with their interpersonal skills and communication. A simple interview process could possibly eliminate this, however interview processes are extremely resource intensive and this is why McMaster couldn't warrent doing them.