Let me see if I can remember some of the facts to getting a license... believe me I have not wanted to remember this frustrating process, at least in the state of Pa. First of all you have to be licensed beginning the first year of your residency and ever year there after, your license is called a Graduate Medical License and is issued for one year only, you have to re-apply every year. And as Dr. Cox indicated there are fees to pay. Yes, and some states are more difficult to deal with than some others, they often require paper documents to varify the number of hours you have credit in medical courses, (3,000 hours required in the state of Pa.), records on all the rotations completed (Pa requires 72 hours and all in MD hospitals, will not accept any rotations completed in DO, if you are applying for MD residency), CV, Transcript send directly from your school, and of course all of your testing records from officials only. All of these requests for paper documents have to be completed in an official manner, some require each hospital seal/notarized, dates have to be varified etc. especially on the rotations completed. My advice to you is keep your records up to date at all times and make sure you get the proper papers from your school and hospitals. Keep track of addresses, names, performance records, everything you do.
Yes, it is a big hurdle...but thousands manage to get licensed every year, and so will you. If the form ask about criminal record be honest and provide explanations, remember you only have to inform when there has been a CONVICTION!!!Can't say I know any MDs' with criminal records but let's assume it is possible. Just look at it as something else to get through. Hopefully you weren't forty something when this happened, most of the time folks understand the acting out of our youth and bad choices we sometimes make. Good Luck. Hope this helps.
And always try to follow up with the licensing board and find out if your documents are getting to them and if not what you can do. That was the main problem with the Pa licensing board, you would call up there and noone could/would answer your questions, very frustrating, only to find out in my case a week before my residency was to begin 2 hospitals had forgotten the seal (in fact one doctor I rotated with had left the hospital, and the doctor replacing him refused to sign the papers, since I had not done the rotation with her, we resolved it by having the orginal papers notarized, but that took valuable time as the replacement doctor let the papers lay on her desk for about 2 weeks before responding, costing me some pay checks, some programs refuses to pay you unless you are a licensed doctor, it's actually against the law to do so). Stuff like this occurs all the time, so even if you are doing everything right, life never stays the same. I apologize for this being so long, but if I can help let me know.
