A poll about what you would do....

[miler]

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Just out of curiousity, if you had the option of attending a very reputable school, out of your country, (US), to get your MD, but you would have to be away from family/friends for four years total, OR you had the option of attending a smaller school, a little bit more of a stigma attached, but it would still get you where you wanted to go, and you would only have to be out of the country (and away from family and friends) for two years.....What would you do?
I'm sure you can all see I'm going with a U of Sydney vs. SGU comparison, but it is one that I'm struggling with and would like to hear other peoples opinions on this.
Thanks.

 

[redshifteffect]

Originally posted by miler
Just out of curiousity, if you had the option of attending a very reputable school, out of your country, (US), to get your MD, but you would have to be away from family/friends for four years total, OR you had the option of attending a smaller school, a little bit more of a stigma attached, but it would still get you where you wanted to go, and you would only have to be out of the country (and away from family and friends) for two years.....What would you do?
I'm sure you can all see I'm going with a U of Sydney vs. SGU comparison, but it is one that I'm struggling with and would like to hear other peoples opinions on this.
Thanks.

Miler,

It depends on what you want in life...if you are 100% sure you want to return to the US SGU is a very very good option.

 

[tl47]

Agreed (depends on what you want from life). And what you really think of doing medicine for. If it is merely to help people, then geographical borders probably doesn't matter as much.

Oz will be my third country where I'm staying for an extended time! And I am hoping to practice in a fourth country further in the future (where there is more need for medical care).

 

[redshifteffect]

Originally posted by miler
Just out of curiousity, if you had the option of attending a very reputable school, out of your country, (US), to get your MD, but you would have to be away from family/friends for four years total, OR you had the option of attending a smaller school, a little bit more of a stigma attached, but it would still get you where you wanted to go, and you would only have to be out of the country (and away from family and friends) for two years.....What would you do?
I'm sure you can all see I'm going with a U of Sydney vs. SGU comparison, but it is one that I'm struggling with and would like to hear other peoples opinions on this.
Thanks.

I think flindophile did an excellent summary of a lot of different things...

Just to add a couple of points here as you can probably see Australia may give you the option later on of staying there, or going to some other countries, I'm not sure about SGU but I can definitely tell you that with ur SGU degrees ur chances of coming to Australia become slim.

If you don't think your family would like to migrate to Australia with you (in case you decide to come here) then SGU is good too in the sense that you can fly home more often. Unfortunatley flying 2 Australia can be pretty expensive.

Keep in mind though that doing ur rotations in the US will definitely hurt ur chances of staying in Australia

 

[trkd]

flindophile: I am not sure where you are getting your info from but there are a couple corrections I must make. You CANNOT do all you 4th year rotations in the US. You can do an 8-wk 4th year rotation, 1 or 2 4-wk electives (how many you make time for, only 1 is required and they are generally done in the period between 3rd and 4th year), and you 8-wk (I think 8 weeks) pre-internship term (last thing before graduation). I assure you this is correct. However, we are working on getting another 8-wk rotation allowed in the US. We met with the dean of the med school last week.

redshifteffect: I am not sure of your experiences in Australia, but based on my info here at USYD, doing your rotations in the US does not hurt your chances of staying in AUS because the residency system is quite different than the US. You do not apply for residencies right out of school as you do in the US but that is a whole different topic.

 

[redshifteffect]

Originally posted by trkd
flindophile: I am not sure where you are getting your info from but there are a couple corrections I must make. You CANNOT do all you 4th year rotations in the US. You can do an 8-wk 4th year rotation, 1 or 2 4-wk electives (how many you make time for, only 1 is required and they are generally done in the period between 3rd and 4th year), and you 8-wk (I think 8 weeks) pre-internship term (last thing before graduation). I assure you this is correct. However, we are working on getting another 8-wk rotation allowed in the US. We met with the dean of the med school last week.

redshifteffect: I am not sure of your experiences in Australia, but based on my info here at USYD, doing your rotations in the US does not hurt your chances of staying in AUS because the residency system is quite different than the US. You do not apply for residencies right out of school as you do in the US but that is a whole different topic.

Doing your rotations in the US does hurt your chances of staying in Australia in this sense: When you apply for a position in a residency program (where ever that may be) having non Australian rotations will definitely be a mark against you. The program director may feel that you do not have sufficient Australian experience; its a very hit and miss process when applying for a residency here. This is an even bigger problem for the more competitive residencies.

Also keep in mind for surgery you are obligated to compete a 6 month ICU rotation within Australia...and to get that you must have a minimum amount of Australian experience.

The other thing is getting an internship...I'm not sure but from what I was told you need a certain amount of rotations in Australia to be able to qualify for an internship here...without that you can't even apply for the residency....any info on that?

Also check out this site...
http://www.racs.edu.au/cgi-bin/sitemap.cgi

My feeling is that if you do all your rotations overseas you will still be considered international even though you have an Australian MBBS....I don't know what the policies are on this ....does anyone else know?

 

[BellKicker]

Miler, I wish I had problems like yours!

Where ever you choose to go, it should make for a cool experience and a solid career.

Good luck.

 

[trkd]

flindophile: It is important for many of us but, at the moment, we cannot spend the entire year away. We are working on getting another rotation away though. We'll see how that works out.

redshifteffect: The thing about residency here is that you do not apply for if right out of med school. You do internship for a few years. Generally after 2-3 years, you apply to a particular college (e.g. College of Surgeons or College of Cardiologists). Your internship year is pretty much given to you. The only real thing in question is which hospital you will be at. So you see, you get hospital training as a doc far before you even apply for residency. Furthermore, at the moment, you can only do 1 actual rotation away (we are not talking about the electives here) . So doing ALL your rotations away is not really an option. I looked at the site you gave and I didn't find anything there to the contrary but maybe I didn't look closely enough.

I am not sure if this cleared things up a bit but I hope it helped.

 

[redshifteffect]

Originally posted by trkd
flindophile: It is important for many of us but, at the moment, we cannot spend the entire year away. We are working on getting another rotation away though. We'll see how that works out.

redshifteffect: The thing about residency here is that you do not apply for if right out of med school. You do internship for a few years. Generally after 2-3 years, you apply to a particular college (e.g. College of Surgeons or College of Cardiologists). Your internship year is pretty much given to you. The only real thing in question is which hospital you will be at. So you see, you get hospital training as a doc far before you even apply for residency. Furthermore, at the moment, you can only do 1 actual rotation away (we are not talking about the electives here) . So doing ALL your rotations away is not really an option. I looked at the site you gave and I didn't find anything there to the contrary but maybe I didn't look closely enough.

I am not sure if this cleared things up a bit but I hope it helped.

I was under the impression this is the way the system worked:

- You do an internship but as international students we are not guaranteed one...and in truth not every international student gets an internship

- after you finish an internship you apply to any college you want...but if you apply to surgery or physican training you have to complete the surgical/physician exams. If you get pass and get in, you do 3 years basic training and 3 year advance training. The other programs have their own admittance program. However as internationals without a PR we cannot get accepted to these programs...

 

[trkd]

My understanding of the matter is this:

1 year internship (do a bit of everything)

1-2 (usually 2) years of being a resident (this is different from what we call a resident, this is doing a bit of everything and according to a resident that I met last week it is not any different from internship, just higher up on the ladder)

Apply for a "college" (what we call a residency program or specialty) and sit the exams for that college. If successful, you become a registrar (our equivalent to being a resident). From there you do how many every years for your specialty.

Do not be confused by the resident thing. It is different here.

 

[redshifteffect]

Originally posted by trkd
My understanding of the matter is this:

1 year internship (do a bit of everything)

1-2 (usually 2) years of being a resident (this is different from what we call a resident, this is doing a bit of everything and according to a resident that I met last week it is not any different from internship, just higher up on the ladder)

Apply for a "college" (what we call a residency program or specialty) and sit the exams for that college. If successful, you become a registrar (our equivalent to being a resident). From there you do how many every years for your specialty.

Do not be confused by the resident thing. It is different here.

- isn't that what I said above?

- Also you don't necessarily have to do the extra 2 years (RMO) to get into a "college" ie. registrar training program. It is quite possible to do it after the internship year....but not for us internationals (unless we get the PR by then).

- Most programs are 6 years in duration; but this really varies with many ppl. taking longer than 6 years...all depends on how well you do on the exams required to pass the program

- As a registrar you make more money than an internship...so that means depending on the hospital and the year you are in the pay could be 100,000 (AUD)

- Some states pay more. New South Wales and Victoria are notorious for paying less