what about the people from latin america, what we are ???????
You can "enter" the UK system at different levels.
1. If you're a fresh graduate you can apply for
provisional registration and then apply for Foundation Year 1 (FY1) posts. In foundation posts you rotate through different specialties (three to four months in each), similar to the US preliminary programs.
2. If you have some postgraduate experience but are not quite at the level of independent "senior" physician, you can apply for
full registration and then apply either for FY2 or for Specialty Training (ST1, 2... and so forth). What ST year you can apply for will depend on how much previous experience in the specialty you have.
3. If you're a fully qualified physician (i.e. you've completed specialty training/residency/whatever postgraduate training) you can apply for both
full and specialist registration and then practice independently at a consultant level.
In the first two scenarios there is an excess of applicants and lack of positions, so it's difficult (but not impossible) to land a job. By European law, employers can only hire you if they fail to find a British/European citizen with similar qualifications.
In the third scenario there is a shortage of consultants (in many but not all specialties). So it shouldn't be a problem to find a job. The problem is getting that registration.
Now,
in order to get a registration and apply for the above posts, you may consider doing the following.
1. PLAB test. Will entitle you to provisional or full registration, i.e. the first two scenarios. If you have completed what GMC would consider to be an equivalent to FY1 in your country (and by that they usually mean 6 months medicine and 6 months surgery) you'll be granted a full registration (
on passing PLAB). Otherwise it'll be provisional.
The PLAB test is not difficult. You do need, however, to take an English test first, and you can only take the second part after passing the first. So in the most favorable scenario (passing everything in one attempt) you're talking about a year time wise.
2. Sponsorship - granted by a respective Royal College. As far as I know, this route to registration was really easy to follow in the early 2000's but then the colleges stopped sponsoring overseas doctors. I might be wrong on this one.
3. Obtaining acceptable postgraduate qualifications. These include MRCP, MRCS and so on (there is a list on the GMC website). IMHO, if you're capable of passing those you might as well shoot for the specialist registration (see below).
4. To get
specialist registration you can apply via Article 14. This is an expensive and lengthy process (you need to submit a small briefcase of supporting documents) but at the end you get a specialist registration and a lot of opportunities.
5. You may also demonstrate in some other way that your qualifications and experience are sufficient to work in an unsupervised consultant post. I believe this is the route usmd followed (correct me if I'm wrong). I don't know the details about this route to registration.
Also, PMETB has ceased to exist (it was merged with the GMC). Dig their website for information. It's very confusing but it is all there.
http://www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/index.asp
