Transcript for:
Becoming a Doctor in Australia

hi everyone my name is Dr manik Madan I'm a pgy2 resident here in the United States and in this video we will dive deep into how to become a doctor in Australia for international students this video is divided into seven Parts the first part is about the benefits of becoming a doctor in Australia the second one is the pathway is to become a consultant in Australia third is the exams required and fourth is house residency training like fifth salary plus lifestyle of attending doctors sixth is how much does it cost to become a doctor in Australia and seventh is Visa and immigration so let's start with the benefits of becoming a doctor in Australia the first benefit is after you become a consultant the degree that you get is globally recognized in UK Canada Middle East Singapore New Zealand India and so on secondly this pathway is far more affordable compared to USMLE and plab and you will find out more about the total expense where with different Pathways as I dive deeper into the cost in later parts of the video third is the junior doctor salary when you start so this is basically the intern salary for PG by one is about 70 000 Australian dollars the average salary of a general practitioner is about 300 000 Australian dollars for consultant salaries it's 250 to 500 000 Australian dollars if you're in the private sector which is possible unlike USA and UK which take a lot of time with immigration you can make millions in Australia one of the best parts is that the green card or permanent residency you get it within two years of getting your full registration which means after you finish your internship and citizenship you'll get it within one year of getting your green card or permanent residency now let's go into different Pathways to become a doctor in Australia the first pathway is the standard pathway and this pathway is the most common pathway that's taken by recent medical graduates who are not Specialists generally the second part pathway is competent Authority pathway the Australian medical Council recognizes certain countries as having medical graduates equivalent to its own and so they don't need to write AMC exams the third pathway is the specialist pathway where if you're a trained specialist you can apply and bypass AMC exams and you can apply directly for specialist recognition so these Pathways you can bypass EMC exams with standard pathway you have to give AMC exams now let's jump into standard pathway and this is the whole standard pathway as we will go through step by step so the first part is your med school eligibility check this you can do via the links mentioned below I will mention all the links you can go to the Australian Medical council's website and run and eligibility check to see if your medical college is recognized by the AMC to participate in the standard pathway the second part of the process is opening your epic account epic stands for electronic portfolio of international credentials it's a service run by ecfmg which is a USB based company you would also be familiar with ecfmg if you have done usmly it's the same company that's running epic and what you need to do is you need to open your epic account and upload your whole CV into epic and they will run an identity verification about whether you're a real person or not after this you will establish your Australian medical Council portfolio which is a portfolio of all your CV all your medical degrees everything in one place so that the AMC can have a look at it you also need to recognize that AMC is Contracting out the work of the verification of your identity and degrees to ecfmg and ecfmg does this via the Epic account like the first process is again your identity verification after which you'll make an AMC portfolio and the second part of the Epic verification is medical school degree verification this is also called as primary source verification where epic will verify whether you've actually graduated from your medical college or not after this you have to write your AMC part 1 exam which is a multiple choice question exam once you pass your AMC part part one exam you can actually apply for a job but again this is an optional path once you do your AMC exam you do need to write your oet IELTS and if you are able to do those things you can directly apply for a job which is a paid job if you get an interview you get an employment letter you can go to work under Australia under limited registration and work there for a year as a junior medical officer you'll again be paid a salary of 60 to 80 000 Australian dollars medical graduates can either go to this a root of the pathway or they can bypass this and directly write the part to clinical exam also there is an alternative to the party clinical exam because some people consider it hard so they have this alternative called the WBA or workplace based assessment I will dive into this later as well after you're done with both your AMC part 1 and part 2 exam you can apply for what is called as provisional registration to work in Australia as an intern which is about one year internship you'll be paid for this once you do your one year enter own ship you can get General registration and you can enter residency training there's a slight bit of confusion that this residency when you look at it people think that this is post graduate training here it's not quite the same and I will clear up this confusion later after this you do registrar ship so to register our ship is the equivalent of residency training like general medicine Internal Medicine surgery Obstetrics and Gynecology residency training is more like core training if you have heard about it in the UK after this you can work as a consultant the second pathway is called as the competent Authority pathway competent Authority pathway is a pathway that medical graduates from US Canada UK New Zealand and Ireland as well as certain imgs who have done us MLM lab can use to bypass the AMC exams so what is the meaning of competent Authority pathway the Australian medical Council recognizes the following competent authorities that graduate medical students into doc doctors as being as competent as their own Council and hence the medical graduates from these countries where these competent authorities lie as being equivalent to its own so logically graduates from these countries do not need to write Australian medical Council exams because they are equivalent to a medical graduate in Australia the following are the competent authorities the GMC from UK medical Council of Canada the elishon committee of medical education USA this is basically the MD programs in the United States the next is national board of osteopathic medical examiners complex USA this is the do degree that you would have heard of in U.S the fifth one is medical Council of New Zealand nzrex sixth one is medical Council of Ireland and the last one is imgs who've written plab and USMLE but you just don't need this you need another component that many people miss and that is you need experience for medical graduates from UK New Zealand Ireland you need at least one year year of supervised clinical training this could be like when you go to the UK there's foundational ear training so you need at least like a non-training job where you work for at least one year if you have done plab you can also do this one year of supervised clinical training and directly bypass any AMC exam and apply for provisional registration if you are a medical graduate from USA or Canada or you have done USMLE you need two years of supervised clinical training and this is residency training in the US because there's nothing such as a non-preneur job in the United States the whole pathway is summarized as below so the first thing you need is again the medical school eligibility check which is on the Australian medical Council website the next part is you need to open your epic account and get your identity verification done after which you establish your AMC portfolio just like the standard pathway and you need to get your medical degree verified via epic after this you don't need to write any AMC exams you can directly Buy pass all of them and get provisionally registered with AMC before applying for a job which is a one-year internship this is also called as pgy1 in Australia it's a non-training job after this you apply for General registration and then do residency registrarship and then become a consultant so quite similar to The Standard pathway except you don't have the AMC exams here next pathway is the specialist pathway specialist pathway is for International Medical graduates who have trained abroad in a particular specialty like Internal Medicine Pediatrics Psychiatry they finish their residency training plus they have a fellowship you don't always need it but like it's generally recommended as well you need three years of clinical practice after you have done both residency training and fellowships after you've done that you are considered overseas trained specialist who can use the specialist pathway and bypass the AMC exams under this there are three subpathways the first one is you're applying for specialist recognition which means that has a overseas trained specialist you are applying for them to assess you if you are comparable to Australian trained specialist the second is area of need recognition what that means is there are places in Australia which are in need of Specialists because the NATO Specialists who were trained in Australia don't want to go there and for this apply for assessment and see if you can get area of need recognition to practice in those remote spots in Australia which are in need of doctors the third subpathway is you apply for both Specialists and area of need recognition at the same time the way this pathway works is similar to standard pathway the competent Authority pathway you have to get your identity verified by epic and then your AMC portfolio done as well as your medical degree verification done and here you have two medical degrees which is your primary medical school degree and then your specialist degrees that you have obtained so these steps are pretty much the similar what differs here is you are going to apply to specialist colleges specialist colleges are special Pacific colleges in Australia which train Specialists called as fellows and they assess whether you are comparable to an Australian trained Specialist or not once you apply to these colleges they'll conduct an initial assessment which would include both your CV check as well as an interview to clarify certain doubts in the CV it would take about three months for them to give an assessment outcome which could be out of the three of the following the first one is you are not comparable at all to an Australian medical specialist leading to you becoming ineligible for this pathway and so you have to go either via the standard or the competent Authority pathway the second one is partially comparable which means that you are somewhat comparable to an Australian trained specialist however there are still significant clinical gaps that need to be addressed because of which the training period is generally longer under a consultant for you to get special recognition if you are deemed partially comparable you get limited registration to practice and train in Australia under supervision of a certain program and then you can train for two years at least to become a consultant if you are deemed substantially comparable what that means is your clinical knowledge is at Power with an Australian trained specialist so you just need to train for at least a year to become a consultant who can practice similar to partially comparable you are given limited registration to train in a certain College under supervision after which it takes just one year to become a consultant next part is the exams for AMC there are two exams AMC part one and AMC part two AMC part one it's a McQ exams a multiple choice question it tests your clinical knowledge and this is very much unlike the U assembly step one which is more about basic Sciences it consists of 150 multiple choice questions that you have to answer within 3.5 hours you can take it online anywhere in the world via Pearson view centers the wait time for the slot once you register for your part one is about three months which is unlike Club one which my friends tell me takes about 12 to 18 months to just get a slot once you register for AMC part one you have a 12 month validity period for your application you have to apply within these 12 months one of the best parts about AMC part one is it has unlimited attempts which is unlike USMLE and plab there's no negative marking and the score is valid forever unlike usmlab you get access to a paid job directly after plab one if you can secure one you you can work under limited registration there you assembly plab do not offer this for USMLE you need to write your step one step two and oet to actually match Hindu Residency program so that you can practice for Club it you need to write your plab one plab two and oet to get into foundational year one which you have to fight for so unlike you assembly and plab you are getting access to paid job directly after part one which is surprising to me the whole exam is scored from 0 to 500 and the passing score is 250 are announced in about four weeks the pass rate is a 60 pass rate which some people might consider to be very low I would like to point out that as I've talked to my friends who have gone to Australia this pass rate has a negative skew to it the reason that is so is because most graduates who apply via the standard pathway and take the EMC exams are medical graduates who have significant gaps in the clinical knowledge because they have been out of med school for a long period of time leading to them having a 60 pass rate it's actually much higher for recent medical graduates so do not let that scare you off the other surprising part about AMC part one is no IELTS or oat is required for AMC part one which is unlike splab one where you need IELTS and oat to write that exam however IELTS and OT is required for you to get some form of registration in Australia the main recommended resources for AMC part one is for books you need John murthag's general practice book official AMC Handbook of mcqs for question Banks there's the amidex and the AMC question bank that you can get many of my friends also recommend doing previous year recall questions so you can do the last five year questions and they will help guide you in the exam to perform better for prep time if your Basics are strong it takes about two to three months to prepare for MCA part one if your Basics are weak it takes four to six months next is AMC part 2. so AMC part 2 is the oski exam oski stands for objective structured clinical exam it tests your clinical knowledge which implies your history taking physical examination differential diagnosis formulation as well as recommendation of treatment plan and it tests your clinical skills in adult medicine surgery Women's Health Pediatrics Psychiatry as well as social skills that is how you interact with the patients it consists of about 20 stations in these 20 stations you have 16 clinical stations and four rest stations 16 clinical stations out of this 14 of them are scored and two of them are not score each station is 10 minutes consisting of 2 minutes of reading time for that case and 8 minutes of assessment time the total exam is about 3.5 hours long just like AMC part 1 AMC part 2 used to be offline and graduates had to fly to the National test center in Melbourne Australia to give it however in the past two years they have shifted to an online format where you can now take it from all over the world the typical wait time for a slot is about six months you can take this exam limited number of times there's no negative marking your score is valid forever however the caveat of this exam is the 28 pass rate I would again I like to emphasize that this exam is mainly taken by old medical graduates because many recent medical graduates are not familiar with the Australian medical exams and so they don't take it most of them go to U.S Millennium lab so there is definitely a negative skew because these old graduates kick the EMC part two and then because of the Gap in their knowledge they end up failing causing the pass rate to go significantly down it's not as low for recent medical graduates the second second point I would like to make for this is that if you find it really difficult you can always take a workplace based assessment which is an alternative to part two and you can bypass AMC part 2 through the WBA however you need to be in Australia working in a job where they provide you the workplace based assessment but that's hard to get again the surprising part about this exam is there's no IELTS or oat required study material for this exam consists of the AMC Handbook of clinical assessment Karen short notes you can find all of these online AMC clinical Marvel notes are pretty good as well for question Banks so your previous Knowledge from amadeax and AMC question Banks shawl workout for you you don't need to repeat them but just mentioning that these question Banks would be helpful for you to consolidate your clinical knowledge for videos you need tally O'Connors ad exam videos you can compliment your knowledge through that geeky Medics on geekymedics.com also have great videos I'll mention the links Below in the description prep time generally for this exam is three to four months eight to ten hours a day this is variable for different people based upon how strong their Basics and clinical knowledge are oat and IELTS you also would need an English proficiency exam to apply for any kind of registration you can either take away your IELTS these exams are required for limited provisional General and specialist registration at the least so you cannot apply to AMC for registration without these exams you can take oat or IELTS anywhere online there are worldwide centers for these for Oat you need a minimum passing score of B in each of the four components which is listening Reading Writing and speaking for IELTS you need a minimum over a call score of seven in each of the four categories which is listening Reading Writing and speaking technically if you ask people and if you ask me oat is far easier than IELTS everyone goes with oat however oet is more expensive than IELTS so yeah there is a bit of trade-off a difficulty level and the price study material for oet sample questions on the official website are good enough and you can also take a free course which is offered by 82 oat and that's all you need that's what I used for my preparation for oet next let's talk about residency training here I'm going to address a lot of confusion around what is residency training in Australia and a lot of the terminology once you apply as an international medical graduate you are applying for the internship and the only way to get into internship is to have provisional registration after you're done with your AMC exams you apply for provisional registration and then you get into internship which is pgy1 here after you're done with your internship you apply for what is called as a residency this is pre-vocational training not specialist training it is more equivalent of internship extension you're just going through different parts of medicine and finding out which part of medicine do you like or not so after this after doing at least one to two years of residency training can you apply for what is called registrarship or specialty training research ship is equivalent oppose graduate training like Internal Medicine theatrics or OB GYN surgery that is what registrarship is the levels before that are just you working there as a junior medical officer be it internship or residency after registrarship you can apply for Fellowship for extra training registrationship is about three to seven years long total training duration comes to about five to nine years in total consisting of one year of internship one to two years of residency and three to six years of registration work-life balance as a junior doctor so this means your internship your residency training your registrarship is you work five days a week 40 hours a week and if you cross the 40 hours a week it's considered overtime for which you are given compensation you also get five weeks of paid vocation during a year there are no 24 hour calls unlike the United States system salary wise the intern based salary is between 60 000 to 80 000 Australian dollars per year this comes to about 1 350 Australian dollars per week when you're considering a 40 hour work week so the base salary is about 33 Australian dollars per hour and it increases by 10 000 Australian dollars every year as you climb the hierarchy let's say from pgy 1 to pgy2 so if you're a pgy1 resident you're earning about seventy thousand dollars per year in pgy2 you'll be making 80 000 Australian dollars per year so it will keep increasing salary for the same position increases by 2.5 percent every year to adjust for inflation if you're in pgy one the next year the salary for pgy one would increase by 2.5 percent so technically in five years a pgy one would be ordering the same salary as a pgy too for overtime the compensation rates are as following for the first two hours after you cross the 40 hour Mark you are given 1.5 times the base pay and after you cross these two hours you are given 2x the base pay if you're working Saturdays and Sunday so basically the weekend you're compensated for that so 1.75 x the base pay for Saturdays and two times the base pay for Sundays if you're working public holidays you're given two times the base pay plus an additional day off in that year to compensate for you working the public holiday 1.5 x the base pay the 33 dollars would be about 50 Australian dollars per hour 1.75 x the base pair would be 58 dollars per hour and 2x the base pay would be 66 dollars per hour an example of like a pgy1 which is an intern working 70 hours per week would show us that they would make about 170 Australian dollars per year which is equivalent to USD 110 000 and the average salary of Junior doctors in America is 64 000 per year so this is almost double which is wow now let's talk about attending doctor salary and lifestyle as an attending doctor you generally work five days a week 40 hours a week and you are compensated for your overtime just like the junior doctors you get five weeks of paid vacation and there are no 24 hour calls unlike us salary wise our student doctors make Journey from 300 000 to to 1 million Australian dollars yearly as general practitioner you would make on an average 300 000 Australian dollars per year a consultant on an average would make 400 000 Australian dollars per year and a private practice physician can make up to one million Australian dollars per year these are amazing salaries and again remember that these salaries are for the 40 hours per week of work so that's the base pay if you work more you get more the cost how much does the Australian medical Council pathway cost for the standard pathway here are the following costs for each of the steps so the medical school eligibility check is free to open the Epic account and get your identity verified it's gonna take you about 200 Australian dollars to establish the AMC portfolio it's 600 Australian dollars for epic Medical School degree verification you need one credential verified It's Gonna Take You 154 Australian dollars the EMC part 1 MC exam is quite expensive at 2920 Australian dollars if you take the optional step and apply for a job after MC par part 1 and get limited registration this will cost you about 1855 Australian dollars AMC part two if you take it online would cost you 4130 Australian dollars if you take it in the National Test Center Melbourne in Australia it's cheaper 3730 Australian dollars the workplace based assessment if you have that available in the job setting where you're working it will cost a thousand dollars WBA is the cheapest option if it's available to you and it's easier to pass than the AMC part of clinical exam provisional registration which you need to work as an intern would cost you 920 Australian dollars and general registration which you do after one year of internship would cost you 1 855 Australian dollars just like the limited registration the total cost without limited registration if you don't take the option step is 10 800 Australian dollars total cost with limited registration is twelve thousand six hundred Australian dollars now let's talk about the combined Authority pathway some of the steps again are the same as the standard pathway now Medical School LGBT check is free epic account would cost you 200 Australian dollars AMC portfolio would cost you 600 Australian dollars the medical school degree verification by epic is 154 Australian dollars you bypass the EMC exams where you're saving the most amount of money directly applying for provisional registration which is 920 Australian Dollars General registration is 1855 Australian dollars the total cost comes to about 3 700 Australian dollars which is not as expensive specialist pathway how much does that cost so for specialist pathway you would again do the medical eligibility check which is free open the Epic account which is 200 Australian dollars the AMC portfolio is 600 Australian dollars epic med school degree verification which is primary source verification is more expensive here because you're getting at least two degrees verified so it would come to about 308 Australian dollars which is double of what you would pay another Pathways here there is no concept of provisional registration there's what is called as limited registration where you'll be training as a specialist in Australia that's 1855 it's more expensive than provisional registration special registration is quite expensive 2495 Australian dollars in total the cost would come to about 5 500 Australian dollars now let's talk about Visa and immigration which is one of the best parts about the AMC pathway firstly to work any job in Australia you would need a visa the Visa you typically get is the work visa 482 also called as the temporary skill shortage Visa this is a two-year Visa which can be extended up to two years for a maximum of four years of working in Australia once you are able to achieve your full registration you can apply directly for green card and PR and it takes about average of two years which is super fast and if I were to go the U.S 70 route it would take me 14 years to get a green card in USA if I were to do the same thing why the plab route and apply it there get a PR in UK green card in UK would take me about five years so this is the fastest Pathway to get a green card the citizenship is within one year permanent residency the best part about having a green card this fast is it opens doors for Private Practice since you don't need a visa anymore work for a certain Hospital you can just work for yourself so guys thank you for watching if this video helped you please give me a like And subscribe as well for more content relating to becoming a doctor in Australia and other countries