Internship places for international medical graduates

[Jono]

Quote: Originally Posted by forevafrensbear

Why is it unfair?

Why should everyone who makes it through medical school be automatically employed instead of hospitals being able to choose from the best graduates?

The argument for domestic students is that it's a waste of money spending $200,000 educating these people in what is (unlike other degrees like law and engineering) a completely practical degree akin to an apprenticeship.

[hotpot]

Quote: Originally Posted by forevafrensbear

Why is it unfair?

Why should everyone who makes it through medical school be automatically employed instead of hospitals being able to choose from the best graduates?

Engineers graduate without jobs. Law students graduate and compete VERY heavily for article clerkships if that is what they want and it is even harder if they're after a big law firm.

The difference is that in those career pathways, they compete for positions in the private sector, and if necessary, law students can often change to accounting/finance/psych or what ever double degree that they studied. They need work experience and with that they can start their own business if they cant find a job.

What medical graduates are competing for is not work experience as such in engineering and law, rather another 6 years of education before we can be consultants.

Fair enough the argument that engineering and law students compete heavily. But going through the public health system is NOT their only road.

[forevafrensbear]

There are many medical and non-medical career options once somebody has finished their internship:
1. Working for Medicare as a government/medical advisor
2. Medical politics
3. Medico-legal work (for those who also do their law degree)
4. Full-time locum work.

Sure, full registration is a pre-requisite for for almost everyone but internship isn't an issue, it's been guaranteed till 2012 provided you have PR or are an Australian.

Would I be wrong in saying there is a general lack of awareness in medical school of the potential career options and pathways post-graduation? Even a list such as: surgical, physician, radiology, anaesthetic, dermatology, opthalmology, ICU, ED, pathology, GP, obs&gynae may seem complete. But there is occ health and safety, sports medicine, medical administration, rehabilitation medicine and other jobs that are not necessarily affiliated with colleges.

The public health system is not the only road after internship, though it is the one for many. Other opportunies await for those willing to step outside the square.

[hotpot]

Quote: Originally Posted by forevafrensbear

Sure, full registration is a pre-requisite for for almost everyone but internship isn't an issue, it's been guaranteed till 2012 provided you have PR or are an Australian.

Would I be wrong in saying there is a general lack of awareness in medical school of the potential career options and pathways post-graduation? Even a list such as: surgical, physician, radiology, anaesthetic, dermatology, opthalmology, ICU, ED, pathology, GP, obs&gynae may seem complete. But there is occ health and safety, sports medicine, medical administration, rehabilitation medicine and other jobs that are not necessarily affiliated with colleges.

The public health system is not the only road after internship, though it is the one for many. Other opportunies await for those willing to step outside the square.

But it is exactly the issue: this post is about internship for international students. Sure there are all those areas that one can go into, but most if not all of them needs you to do your internship. Most people enter medicine to practice medicine in the traditional sense of seeing patient's and providing active health care.

The injustice is that international students will be forking out hundreds of thousands of dollars and not even be guaranteed a position after graduation. As we already established, you cant compare medicine to law. For international students, not to have a training position may mean 5 years of med school is a waste as other overseas country may or may not accept their medical education, but will accept Australia's college qualifications.

[forevafrensbear]

In which case, international students can either:
1. Obtain PR / citizenship
2. Be informed they are not guaranteed a job prior to embarking on medical training here.
3. Compete and obtain a medical school spot in their own country.

What makes medicine so special that we can't compare it to other degrees? Other than you need to complete your internship in an accredited post, not all of which may even be in public hospitals. Once you have that one year to full registration, you could locum, apply for a job internationally etc... and it becomes little different to any of the other non-medical degrees when it comes to options. You simply have to compete for a job.

And as for alternatives? The comparison to law does hold up. You could always become a medical scientist or researcher without full registration. Options ARE available but obviously not as attractive.

The cynical side of me implies international medical students fill up spots so universities have funding... and the more they pay, the less the Government (and taxpayer) do for their training.

It has been the norm for some time now, that applicants without Australian PR for registrar / advanced training positions in most specialities will be considered below those that do, almost guaranteeing they may not secure a position. But there are plenty of 'service' non-training jobs in areas of demand which is where and how they will encourage them to be.

It's a simple numbers game, if there are more graduates than jobs, people will graduate unemployed. If you're an international student, well yes it's a bit unfair. But are you going to spend your career in Australia? And if you reverse the positions, how do you think they would feel? There is already increasing resentment about people on 457 visas in jobs when other local people who want that job, can't have it.

Most overseas countries accept Australia's qualifications to the point where you still have to sit additional board exams (e.g. USMLE) to be able to work there in full capacity.

If you thought internship was about the 'traditional sense of seeing patient's and providing health care', perhaps when you become an intern, you can tell the forum how much time is spent doing paperwork, administration, discharge summaries and planning and how much of it is actual 'direct patient contact'.

Medicine has changed much in the last 5 years, much less the last few decades. I'm afraid life as a junior doctor is often not what one imagined it to be in medical school and opportunities now are far harder to come by. I envision it getting worse as numbers of graduates increase.

[woozy]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...-23289,00.html

Looks like some international students got really screwed over by scrouges!
Medical students in no-pay offer as intern crisis bites

Adam Cresswell, Health editor | November 04, 2009

Article from: The Australian
TWO fee-paying medical students have offered to work for a year without pay -- forgoing the typical doctor's starting salary of $55,000 -- if it is the only way they can win the public hospital intern positions they need to complete their training.
The extraordinary offer by the pair -- both University of Sydney fee-paying students from overseas -- is the latest sign of alarm among medical students who worry that a looming training bottleneck may leave some of them jobless.
The training crunch is also putting pressure on universities. They warn that without jobs, international students may stop coming, in turn weakening the finances of institutions dependent on the income they bring.
Final-year student Mian Bi, 25, who is from China but grew up in Singapore, said he had spent nearly $400,000 on his education in Australia, and adding an extra year's living expenses of about $20,000 would make little difference. "After being here for six years, I think of Australia as home, and I would definitely like to stay," Mr Bi said.
"But without an internship you won't get full registration, and without full registration you can't stay because you can't get permanent residency."
Although most states have moved to guarantee intern positions to medical students, the pledge applies to domestic students only, leaving those from overseas facing continued uncertainty. First-year student Shan Siddiqi, 24, from the US state of Missouri, said forgoing his first year's salary was a worthwhile sacrifice if the alternative was being left with no means to repay his expected $300,000 debt.
"I had assumed that if I came here and worked hard and did well, I would get a place -- whereas the truth is it doesn't matter how hard I work, I may not get a place because of my residency status," Mr Siddiqi said.
Martin Facini, a second-year medical student from Canada, said 75 per cent of international medical students wanted to stay in Australia, and it was "a bit shortsighted" to shut them out.
The training bottleneck is being caused by the rapid expansion of medical school places, which will see the annual number of medical graduates more than double from 1632 in 2006 to a projected 3437 in 2012, about 500 of whom will be international students.
Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon said the government was "aware of this issue and is working with states and territories to provide more clinical training places".

[Season]

^^^ So they are essentially doing another year at uni? That's horrible

I think if this continues there might have to be a shift towards having internship allocated on merit.

[theangelofdarkness]

I feel like there is something wrong with this case. I doubt there were no intern spots left anywhere in Australia (although, of course, they may want to stay in Sydney and THAT is the real issue at hand here).

The tsunami hasn't hit yet - we are not at the bottleneck just yet, so I don't know why these students are already taking the extraordinary step of offering to work for free, especially as it may undermine future international students who won't have anything left to bargain with. I understand that they're probably desperate to get a job, but it seems ill advised to me to attempt to work separately when they may be benefited by working for all international students.

There are multiple levels of issues here too - the university doesn't feel it is responsible for ensuring internship places, and the state and federal governments will probably consider it to be the other one's problem.

That being said, I hope they do manage to get internship places without having to sacrifice a year's worth of pay, but I am a little incredulous that it developed a) this year, and b) without any form of warning. Even doing a quick google on "Mian Bi medical student" comes up with only a few hits that seem to relate to this student (one of which is a Federal Senate submission, good going lobbying the government guys) - surely they would have contacted the media about this earlier?

Internships allocated on merit are well and good, but the issue is that if you take away internships from (voting!) citizens to give to non-voting citizens of other countries, who may well decide to leave as soon as they've completed their internships, you're digging yourself a deep political hole. Obviously it is best if internships go to those doctors who are remaining in Australia - and many international graduates may do this, but I suppose it is more likely that an Australian citizen will remain here.

[Matt]

Yeah, there's no way they are at risk of graduating without an intern spot at this point in time. Probably just a media stunt. Not a bad one though, as far as they go.

[forevafrensbear]

umm... as far as I was aware, there were a small number of international graduates (not from Sydney) in my state this year who were also not allocated internship positions. It's not just the number of positions physically (and pragmatically possible) but that each intern costs the Government $55k+benefits/overtime multiplied by the number of interns and they are desperately trying to cut FTE positions across the board too!

I haven't yet heard that the international graduates got guaranteed jobs and remember at the last doctors in training committee we didn't envision future international graduates would have a guaranteed internship position either.

I'm sorry folks - but if you're from overseas and don't have PR, I advise you to study elsewhere. The whole system will discriminate against you. Heck, for international graduates - there is the 10 year embargo; the AMC with it's two year wait-list... so it's not just the students that get the short end of the stick.