Lol, thanks for the capitals. How did you know my eyesight was bad?
Residency in Australia is not like "residency" in canada and the usa.
neither is internship. if you apply back to canada after the Australian intern year, it's no different to canada than if you were a student.
residents in Australia re-apply for their positions every year and are called house officers. (after a few years of 'residency' you can then apply for registrar training in Australia - you may as well learn the lingo if you're going to Australia. Registrar training is not exactly like 'residency' in the USA and Canada either, but it is how Australians finish their vocational training. It follows the UK system, where..Canada and the US erm. follow each other).
my apologies, did not pick up the first time what you meant (even though I should - hence predicating my post with - i'm really beat from work), i.e. what are your chances after you finish training.
those are highly specific questions I can't answer and would suggest that you take it up with the canadian doctors in the Canadian forum.
Only GP training - due to mutual agreement between Canada and Australia - allow you to easily go back to Canada after finishing up GP training in Australia. and vice versa. I can't tell you the details farther from that. literally. i've only heard of this mythical thing. much like agreements that the UK and Australia have. It may require some rotations under supervision, but no exams I think.
Paediatrics is..
well, sure let's call it a specialty.
It's more primary care if you were ask me and more of a general field, similar to how internal medicine is for adults.
as you cover 'everything' ish within paeds. there's a need for paediatricians, particularly rural. Not really paediatric specialties however (i.e. Paediatric endocrinology)
I wouldn't think you'd have to re-do paeds residency, but yea, clinical supervision by another paediatrician for a number of months and exams. Apart from that, I have no specific answer to offer you. i'm in Australia. I'm not a paediatrician. Have you talked to a Canadian paediatrician about any of this? particularly IMG background ones?
Paediatric training is highly competitive in Australia fyi. There's fewer spots for it compared to say internal medicine or GP.
Everyone has to do years of residency (so the years after internship) in a paediatric hospital and there's essentially only one paeds hospital per Australian state. it's very challenging for people to even get to be a Paeds residents at those hospitals, but once they're in, only then are they really able to apply for registrar training to finish off their training. So we're talking years here, after intern year, it's at least another 5-6 (or more) years to become a paediatrician. It's challenging to get into paeds. I've known highly qualified individuals who've applied for the privilege of just being a resident at a paeds hospital for years and then have to give up and settle for GP training. Training itself is also rigourous and demanding. the exit exams are gruelling. by the time you finish school + postgrad, it will have been 10 years or more. also, i would never advertise to the Australians that you intend to go home after getting fully trained by them (they won't like that - that's if you get so far as to get to apply for paeds residency/reg training).
It's rare for people to move from one Western country to another after finishing their training.
no two western countries are the same. after you do 10-12 years of training in one country, you're attuned to how they work and function. have you considered the possibility that you'll also have set up roots - house, car, kids, significant other? most grad entry students with prior degrees will be in their mid 30s to 40s by the time they're done
everything. It's also harder to give up networks. i would not overlook the importance of having people you trust to whom you can make referrals to and vice versa. they're more likely to be accepting of you if you've worked with them before or trained with them. True you can rebuild these, just saying they're hard to give up after you've been deeply entrenched into a particular location and system.
Just don't pick a paediatric subspecialty and you wont' be at risk of falling into the 'no need' category.
be open to working as a rural paediatrician (or a regional one, just not major city).
There's also nothing wrong with being a GP that focuses on paediatrics.
The nightmare situations are often foreseeable from medical school once you start rotating and making connections while on rotations, that's if you do a bit of digging. if you're interested in an area, people higher up will tell you what they think and where they think their particular field is heading towards.
even in Australia, there are subspecialties that have very few jobs around after training for attendings.
general rule of thumb, however, subspecialties that are tied to large tertiary hospitals have fewer positions. there's less of a need for them. wheareas the more community based you are, or if the position could be offered at smaller hospitals, the more positions there will be. because there's more smaller hospital around than tertiary ones. no one's going to fund more doctors of a particular area than necessary. not unless you go private - which you can't do in Canada.
Volunteering as a premed is not the same thing as going on clinical rotations as a final year medical student after 3-4 years of medical training. you can keep it on the cv, to show that you were interested in paeds since before med school. but it isn't going to have nearly the same weight as having paediatric research done during medical school and experience on rotation. extracurriculars that stand out are more than just weekly volunteering, it would be like..you headed a volunteer organization involved in paeds in some way. things that show leadership. because that's what will be expected of you as a doctor - to lead. Regardless, leave the 5 years of volunteering on the CV if you go to apply for jobs later. the accumulation of time still means something.
And that away rotation as a final year to say north america, or what's called the Sub-I or subinternship - it's your audition to that country or hospital. they are testing your skills as a doctor-to-be, you get patients to manage as if you were a (very junior) doctor (under close supervision).
i'd recommend that you shadow a friendly paediatrician in Canada, set up some connections that way. Then do electives or rotations with them later. get some mentoring. it also makes for much better LORs and referees in future, as they can say they will have known you for years and seen you grow as a clinician. You need a way in.
Again..I think many of your questions are better suited to the Canadian forum, where there will be practicing doctors there that are presently in Canada and were previously IMGs (or are working with them). ..as a warning. you may or may not get some unfriendly comments (hopefully not), as it is the internet and there is prejudice and stigma attached to having a "foreign" medical degree (whether citizen or not to that country). just filter through those to get the advice you're after.
Residency carries a ROS because you're 'returning a favour' to the government, taxpayers etc. It's training. It's a resource.
if you're fully trained by another country, in a sense Canada's getting a fully trained one 'for free'. less strings attached I would presume. but I have no idea.
Also, all these questions specific to returning to canada..
I gather you've realized that you're trying to find answers to some thing that is 10 years away.
Who knows what will change then. More than likely not much. But you never know.
