What exactly do I have to do to become a doctor in Canada?

Question

I'm very good at Biology, Chemistry and Math. I am thinking of going to school to become a doctor and I was just wondering how much schooling do you have to take before you can become a doctor? Do you know of any good medical schools to go to in Canada? And if you are doctor, please tell me if you enjoy you're job and was it worth it? Also, were you offered employment shortly after completing school?

Answer 1

Keep getting your GPA to the highest you can possibly get it, to at least 3.5 or better. To become a doctor, you need 4 years of bachelor's degree, plus 4 years of actual medical schooling, then your residency, and depending on which area you decide to focus on, it may range from 4-7 years on top of all that. Good medical schools (well known) are U of T, UBC, McGill University, and McMaster University.  

Answer 2

Canada is extremely short of doctors. However, it's also extremely difficult to get into medical school in Canada.

It doesn't sound like you are Canadian (but you may be); I expect it's even more difficult to get in as a foreign student.

The main difficulties we have are:

1) not enough doctors are becoming family doctors (many become specialists to earn more money)

2) many that are trained in Canada leave for the US because they can earn more money

3) the doctors we do have are aging and overworked with too many patients (recently, news stories have surfaced about doctors conducting "lotteries" in order to ensure fairness in terms of who they do/don't treat)

4) not enough doctors in smaller communities, outside the major cities

I'm not a doctor, but I do work in the health care field. Although we have a publicly-funded health care system with many advantages, you can see from the issues above that it's far from perfect and, when combined with the aging population, could be at a crisis stage quite soon.