CaRMS

CRA

In recent years there has been a push from the Ontario government to increase the number of Family Medicine physicians in the province. In response to this, more Family Medicine Residency positions have been created.

As the number of residency positions have continued to expand, so have the number of interviews Faculty conducts on annual basis. The Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) does approximately 500 interviews each year – a number that’s likely to continue to grow in the future.

Potential Canadian Medical Graduate (CMG) residents are interviewed every January through February based on information provided by CaRMS, the Canadian Resident Matching Service.  The interview process is complex:  each candidate’s interview is done by two people (a current resident and a faculty member). In 2011, the Department of Family and Community medicine had 92 resident and 95 faculty interviewers, with a total of 187 individuals involved in interviewing 500 candidates. There are up to 19 pairs of interviewers for each one of the sessions, with each pair of interviewers interviewing up to 4 candidates. Most if not all, interviewers do multiple interviews, often on different days during the three-week period.

Approximately two years ago, Dr. Marcus Law, the Residency Recruitment Coordinator at the Department of Family & Community Medicine, recognized that the increased volume of interviews presented logistical challenges. The existing paper based system used to organize interview data had become obsolete.

Law approached Wes Robertson, Director of the Discovery Commons, about creating an online system that would work with CaRMS to address these challenges and streamline the interview process.

Wes Robertson worked with staff developers Peter Cheung and later Anton Chan to create an application that would automate and streamline the process of interviewing and ranking all the potential residents before they are matched through CaRMS. What was developed was the CRA (Candidate Review Application), a custom web based application automates the coordination of interviews, the distribution of schedules and background material on the candidates and facilitates the collection of “file review” information prior to the interviews. The interface of CRA offers convenient features that allow faculty to complete applicant file reviews at home and enter scores at the interview site. CRA decreases the administrative processing time of transcribing up to 2000 paper forms into a database and increases the accuracy of the data collected. With more accurate candidate evaluation data, the CaRMS system is able to improve the fit of matches for Family Medicine residency positions.

When asked to describe the feedback DCFM Faculty has provided in regards to CRA, Dr. Law says “It’s been amazing. Faculty and residents found the system very easy to use, much more convenient, error-free, and environmentally friendlier than printing out forms.”