Pre-Clerkship

• To inquire about different possibilities for electives, consult the Electives Opportunities section, the Rural Canadian Electives website or the International Electives website.
• You must then contact the supervisor or appropriate department coordinator to ensure availability and feasibility of elective for requested dates and duration.
• See the Electives Contact List for Different Divisions in Ottawa (PDF) for specific contact information of all specialties. Please note that this link is intended for uOttawa students only. The username and password are the same as the ones used to access your ONE45/Elentra account. Please contact the Electives Coordinator at elective@uottawa.ca if you need assistance.
• It is expected that your electives will NOT be organized during curriculum activities, whether mandatory or not. If a student attends an elective during scheduled curricular activities, it may be considered a professionalism issue by some departments, as lecturers and preceptors put much effort into the preparation of their sessions. Electives should be organized during the «Self study/Elective time» included in your schedule. Note that some departments may choose to not accommodate you for morning electives during the week as they know that this is curricular time.
• Please note that your supervisor must be a practicing physician, not a resident.
• Students cannot be supervised in any clinical placements (i.e., core rotation, selective or elective) by a member of their immediate family, extended family including in-laws treating physician or others close to them who could compromise the objectivity of the student's assessment. In addition, students are not permitted to do clinical placements with his or her treating physician. Students must immediately notify the Medical Education Office or Rotation Coordinators to request reassignment if their assigned placement is in violation of this policy. If a physician has treated a student in the past, they should make efforts to avoid any future situation that would put them in a position of evaluating that student.
• Students are not permitted to participate in clinical placements at our affiliated clinical care facilities, including University of Ottawa Health Services, with a physician that has treated them in the past.

Note: 
Please select your elective carefully as switching or cancelling electives once they are booked is discouraged. If it is absolutely necessary to cancel an elective, you must notify the department coordinator and/or the preceptor in writing at least 6 weeks before the start of the elective. Failure to adhere to this national cancellation policy will be considered a breach of professionalism and may be reported to the Director of Electives and the Vice-Dean, Undergraduate Medical Education for follow up.

IMPORTANT: You MUST register your electives PRIOR to the start of the elective. Electives that are registered after the beginning of the elective will be denied. Without this approval, we will be unable to protect you with malpractice and liability insurance.

Please follow these steps:

1. Plan/Find your elective.
2. Go to the Student Tools application.
3. Enter your username and password (the same as the ones used to access your ONE45 account).
4. Open your file by choosing «Clinical Placement».
5. Choose: «Request approval for an elective».
6. Make sure to complete all sections of the form and then choose «Submit».
7. Once the Medical Education Office has approved your elective (in a delay of 48-72 hours), your Clinical Placement file will automatically be updated.

NOTE:

For electives in the City of Ottawa: Choose the preceptor name from the dropdown menu.

• If the preceptor does not appear in the dropdown menu, select the option “Preceptor does not appear in list”, enter the full name, and email address of preceptor in the comment box. The Electives Coordinator will add the preceptor to the menu and will contact you to get supplementary information if needed.
• If no supervisor has been assigned to you at the moment you receive a confirmation, select the option “Elective confirmed by Department Coordinator”. At the end of the elective, update the elective with the preceptor who supervised you.

For electives outside the City of Ottawa: Enter the preceptor's name and email in the free-text boxes that appear.

• If no supervisor has been assigned to you at the moment you receive a confirmation, you must enter the name of the coordinator who confirmed the elective. You will be able to modify this entry at the end of your elective. Requests with TBD, TBA, Multiple preceptors, do not know, etc., will not be approved.

Your evaluations must be sent to your preceptors via the online elective evaluation system. This will be done from your Clinical Placement account. Here are the steps:

1. Register your elective in your Clinical Placement account (status: Requested)
2. The Medical Education Office will approve the elective (status: Approved)
3. To indicate that the elective is done click on the COMPLETED button of the elective entry. Then, update the elective details, if necessary, and save (status: Completed-pending evaluation)
4. Click on the EVALUATION button. You will then be required to complete 3 mandatory steps:
   • Evaluation of preceptor by student
   • Evaluation of elective experience by student
   • Evaluation of student by preceptor – Send evaluation to preceptor
5. Once you have sent the evaluation to your preceptor, they will receive a reminder every 10 days until the evaluation is completed (status: Pending Evaluation by Preceptor)
6. Only once Evaluation of student by preceptor is received in your account will you be able to view your evaluation (status: Closed)

Please note that your evaluations validate your electives.

If you experience difficulties such as personal well being or stress related issues during an elective, please do not hesitate to contact the Electives Coordinator at elective@uottawa.ca or by phone at 613-562-5800 x8552 or toll free at 1-877-868-8292 x8552.

The Office of Student Affairs also offers a confidential counseling and referral service to undergraduate medical students. Students who are experiencing difficulty with stress related to personal and academic demands are encouraged to consult with a professional counselor in Student Affairs. See their website for more information on all their services.

***For the MD2023 cohort, because of the pandemic, the Year 2 Mandatory Elective week was replaced with a Clinical skill review.***

The purpose of this elective is to provide students with an opportunity to enhance clinical skills or to explore clinical areas to facilitate decision making regarding future postgraduate training. The objectives for this elective will vary depending on the main goal to be achieved by the student.

Requirements

The Mandatory Clinical Elective Week must be an elective of at least 20 hours in duration.

You can plan this elective during Reading Week from TBC for 2022 or during the dedicated time for Mandatory Clinical Elective Week from TBC for 2022. The 20 hours cannot span both weeks, they must be completed in one week. You are NOT permitted to do this mandatory elective at other times in the year.

You can choose to complete the elective in the specialty of your choice, however the 20 hours (or more) must be in the same specialty and at the same location.

The elective can be done anywhere in Canada. No international elective location will be approved.

The supervisor must be a practicing physician, not a resident. Students cannot be supervised by a member of their immediate family, extended family, in-laws or anyone with whom you are involved in a close personal relationship.

See section above titled Registering electives to register your elective in Clinical Placement. Note that you will enter this elective as a "Year 2 - Mandatory Clinical Week" in elective type.

IMPORTANT: You MUST register your elective PRIOR to the start of the elective. Electives that are registered after the beginning of the elective will be denied. Without this approval, your elective will not be added to your MSPR (Medical Student Performance Record) and we will be unable to protect you with malpractice and liability insurance.

Elective Types

Whether you do a type I or type II elective (see descriptions below), the faculty expects that they will spend a week focusing on that elective. It is up to the student not to waste this opportunity.

I- Clinical Skills Enhancement Elective

If the elective is for the purpose of Clinical Skills Enhancement, the following recommendations apply:

The student should seek a placement where there will be an opportunity to practice the basic clinical skills they have learned and to be observed performing these skills. Supervisor feedback will aid in perfecting these skills. The student needs to set specific objectives to be achieved during this elective by critically appraising their strengths and weaknesses. These objectives can be discussed with the supervisor at the beginning of the elective and evaluated at the end. The objectives should be noted on the Pre-Clerkship Elective Evaluation Form. The Faculty realizes that the duration of the elective is short and that a limited amount will be achieved during this placement.

The faculty also recognizes that it may be difficult to obtain 5 full days of clinical time. It has been recommended that, in many Family Medicine practices, the student should request 5 half-days. Some supervisors may be willing only to commit 3 half-days. A minimum of 20 hours is still mandatory. The afternoons can be spent reading about the specific exam skills that are being practiced and new issues that arise with each patient. If the student is requesting a placement on a medicine CTU, then they could request 3 half-days of direct contact with the supervisor and/or the clinical team. Variations around this theme can be developed for other clinical settings. It is expected that students will make full use of the week and all the opportunities to learn both while in the clinical placement and then during unscheduled times. The Bates Tapes (videos) are on reserve in the library and are still recognized as a very good reference for learning about clinical skills.

II- Exploring Clinical Areas of Interest

If the elective is for the purpose of exploring clinical areas of interest to facilitate decision making for postgraduate training, the following recommendations apply:

Students should request a 1-week placement. The student should write the objectives for the elective and share these with the supervisor when making arrangements for the elective. It is anticipated that some of the time will be scheduled with the supervisor. There may be half-days when no operations or clinics are scheduled. It is wise for the student to read around the cases they have observed and be prepared to discuss them with the supervisor should the opportunity arise. The greater interest the student demonstrates, the more time the supervisor will devote to the student. Generally, the supervisors will expect the student to be interested in participating in whatever is going on within the chosen department and may suggest various activities that could be attended. Again, the student should take full advantage of the time afforded during the elective to learn as much about the area of medicine as possible. There is no doubt that Stage I electives have helped a number of our students in ruling in or ruling out areas of medicine to consider for postgraduate training. Placements in laboratory medical specialties are included in these electives.