Electives

[shellymedics]

Hello everyone,

I'm posting this here because the question I have is probably best answered by US citizens studying in Australia and Ireland.

I am a medical student in the UK and would very much like to do my elective in the USA. The probelem is that I have no idea about the medical education system in the US at all. I was led to believe that Australian and Irish medical schools have electives for their medical students similar to the way that UK medical schools have. If so, I would assume that many of the American students studying at these places would have gone back to the US for their elective.

I would appreciate any advice from students (American or otherwise) who have done this. Specifically I would like to know:

--Which medical schools/hospitals did you do your elective at?
--How much did it cost to do your elective at this place?
--Are there any contacts or numbers that you could possibly provide me with?
--Are there any personal recomendations you can make?


Don't worry, I'm not lazy, in fact I'm working my butt off to try and make this happen, but the country is so big, I have no contacts, and I have no idea where to start in terms of which places will actually accept me instead of just wanting $300 for me to fill in an application that they will just put in the trash.

Thanks for the help.

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[leorl]

I won't be very useful as I haven't done my elective yet. Electives are tricky things because you organize them yourself, wherever you want - there's no program that organizes electives for you. So... pick a city in the US that you'd like to go to. Look up hospitals in that area, and if email addresses are provided in a staff or faculty listing, start emailing and calling to see if they accept students for electives. Quite a few places do, although you'll have to look up specifics...like Cleveland Clinic, Mayo I think does, there's so many options.

We do have people from other places doing electives too. I can give you contact emails for the hospitals attached to Trinity College (St. James's Hospital and Tallaght Hospital, both in Dublin). Just PM me.

 

[13538]

Some hospitals such as, Columbia (NYC) and Johns Hopkins accept international students for electives but your "home" medical school must have an agreement with the hospital in the US. So, Columbia, for example, has an agreement with Trinity and RCSI to accept students on electives and vice versa...

Shelly>> have you tried asking some of the students in the upper years in your medical school if they have been to the US on electives? Personal recommendations from people in your own med school are probably the best sources of advice for electives...

 

[deleted21609]

Many, many programs in the US will take visiting students. Think of where you want to go and find the med school there. Do you have a particular location in mind? Just go to the medical school's web page and search for visiting student electives. They'll have a list of electives offered and a contact person listed. It's all set up for you already. You've probably done this already since it's a pretty old post, but I'm writing just in case you haven't found anything yet.