By Jodi Reid

Dr. Sarah Galley (BSc’99, BEng’02) describes herself as a bit of a “non-traditional” 4th year medical student.

“Medicine was something I’d always been interested in, but it never seemed to be quite the right time,” explains Galley. “I had a career, but I finally got to a point where I needed to find out whether I could do medicine or not. I was lucky to get into Dal Med on my first try, so now I find myself, at age 44, as the oldest person in our class.”

Born and raised in Sydney Mines, Galley studied science and engineering at Dalhousie and then in the US, followed by several years working in various roles for Nova Scotia Health back in Cape Breton.

“I was working around patients but not directly with them in a clinical way myself,” she says. “The longer I did that, the more I realized I was interested in the patients’ stories more than the work I was doing behind the scenes. That really motivated me to apply to medical school.”

It turned out to be the right move for Galley, who loves working directly with patients today. But with she and her husband already enjoying stable careers and her daughter entering high school, taking on medical school at that stage in her life was a huge decision.

“The scariest part was the finances,” says Galley, who had just paid off her prior student loans when she was accepted to medical school. “I had a relatively secure financial situation that I was now dumping out to pursue this dream. I was essentially taking on a new financial burden.”

Getting by with a little help from bursaries

According to the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, recent medical graduates in Canada accumulated a median debt load of $90,000, with 12% of students reporting having more than $200,000 in debt upon graduation. Costs include tuition, travel to take electives, books, reference subscriptions and equipment. And with her husband and daughter staying put in Cape Breton, Galley had the added cost of a mortgage at home on top an apartment in Halifax.

“I remember the feeling of finding out I had gotten a bursary last year,” she recalls. “It took such a weight off my shoulders to know I didn’t have to worry about putting more financial stress on my family. It just made things a little bit lighter and a little bit easier.”

She notes that government student loans don’t cover costs, so most students take on private bank loans. “As a medical student, you kind of cobble together the financing. Every dollar that I get from a bursary takes a huge mental load off because I know every single day my other loans are accumulating interest.”

Glimmers of hope

After graduating from high school in Halifax, Dr. Behzad Taeb (BSC’15, MSc’18, MD’22) studied straight through his BSc and MSc and directly into medical school. He is now a first-year resident in Radiology at Dalhousie. While Taeb’s path to medicine might have been more traditional than Galley’s, medical school was financially challenging for him as well.

“Most students are not able to work while in medical school because the schedule is too demanding,” Taeb says. “It can be scary to watch your line of credit getting bigger and bigger when you have no income to manage the debt. Financial help like bursaries are a real glimmer of hope that gets us through these four years.”

For Taeb, providing support to the Dalhousie Medical Student Bursary is a worthwhile investment.

“These students are the future doctors who will take care of you and your family, and the patients in your community—it’s important to help them succeed. Once they are doctors they will repay their community through the endless hours they work and the care they will provide for all of us.”

“As much as much as I love medical school, there are days when you come home and worry if you did the right thing,” adds Galley. “Taking that heaviness away through bursary support has such an impact—not just on us as students, but on our families, on our patients, and on everybody whose lives we touch. And we touch a lot of lives. It makes a huge difference.”