How long is the training for Family Medicine in Australia?

[sedination]

Hello,

I am a Canadian considering medical school in Australia. I am quite unfamiliar with the system in Australia and I have a few questions regarding training for family medicine that I hope someone can shed some light on.

To become a family doctor in Canada, you do 4 years of medical school and then 2 years residency.

How does it work out in Australia? I know you do your MBBS for 4 years and there's an internship that lasts a year, but what exactly are the steps to becoming a family doctor and how long does it take? And what exactly is an internship? Is it something that everyone takes regardless of their specialty?

The reason I ask is that after completing my MBBS in Australia, I hear the chances of matching in Canada are not so great. However, I heard that I can do my residency in Australia and that Canada will accept that. Thus, after completing my residency in Australia, I just have to write the licensing exams in Canada before I can practise. Is this true?

Thank you!

edit: After doing further research, I believe doing an Australian residency in family practice is NOT accepted by the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC). The CFPC will only accept residencies from Canada and the US, which I believe is stupid since the RCPSC accepts a lot of Australian residencies from various specialties. AFAIK, the only ways to practise family medicine in Canada with an MBBS from Australia is to get matched through CaRMS (which I hear may become near impossible when I graduate as it seems Canada is heavily increasing seats in med schools while increasing residency positions at a slower rate, leaving less positions for IMGs. This coupled with the fact that the number of IMGs entering CaRMS is increasing every year) or do your residency is the US.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

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[markdc]

Everyone has to do 1 interning year here. It is based on the UK system. Interns are sort of like the grunts from what I understand (sort of like the 1st level help desk). From what I have been told you can get registered after 1 year but you wont have any training. It just recognizes you as capable of working within the system here.

I think it usually ends up with 2 years of interning then 2-3 years of training to be a GP after graduation. I am not 100% sure on that. They seem to keep us in the dark about that stuff and I have heard there were recently some changes to family med. Your best bet is to contact the governing body (College) for each specialty you are interested in. (Feel free to post what you find!)

It is definantly longer to get trained here but you do end up getting paid better while training than you would in Canada so that helps to make it less painful.

Supposedly things are getting easier back in Canada. However this is somewhat of an illusion when you look at the actual numbers. There were 10 Canadian students in my class (including me). The year behind me has 30. When you look at those numbers and the fact that this is just one Uni it becomes apparent that although more spots may open up for matching, there will also be more students competing for them if the trend of Canadians going overseas continues at the present rates. If the Aus schools have doubled and tripled their international spots then what about the other countries?

It costs Canada more money to train you after you graduate so of course they would be more open to you coming over fully qualified. They need to come up with incentives for us Canadians overseas since we are graduating with more debt. If you look at supply and demand, both countries are short of GPs so incentives at both ends would be an intelligent recruiting decision.

Hope that clears up things slightly. I am sure someone else on this board knows the exact timeframe for the family med training in Aus.

Hello,

I am a Canadian considering medical school in Australia. I am quite unfamiliar with the system in Australia and I have a few questions regarding training for family medicine that I hope someone can shed some light on.

To become a family doctor in Canada, you do 4 years of medical school and then 2 years residency.

How does it work out in Australia? I know you do your MBBS for 4 years and there's an internship that lasts a year, but what exactly are the steps to becoming a family doctor and how long does it take? And what exactly is an internship? Is it something that everyone takes regardless of their specialty?

The reason I ask is that after completing my MBBS in Australia, I hear the chances of matching in Canada are not so great. However, I heard that I can do my residency in Australia and that Canada will accept that. Thus, after completing my residency in Australia, I just have to write the licensing exams in Canada before I can practise. Is this true?

Thank you!

 

[craig_rt]

The GP training program takes 3 years full time. You can apply to it after completing 1 year of internship, but often people do an extra year of residency before starting the training. I am not 100% sure, but I think that the residency year can be counted towards the training. That means that after your MBBS it will take at least 4 years to become a GP.

For more info have a look at the Australian General Practice Training website, especially the documents Australian General Practice Training 2006 Handbook and The Australian General Practice Training Guide for GP Registrars.

I don't know anything about using this qualification in Canada, but in many countries you are able to use the qualification after sitting an exam back in that country.

Craig

 

[sedination]

Thanks for the info everyone.

 

[spherical]

Right. Time from MBBS. Possible in 4 years. Usually 5 years. Sometimes longer.

But don't count on getting intership much less Family (General) Practice training. As of the last few years, many international students have been able to stay on for 1-2 years of internship (the second year is called RMO but it is more of the same) -- general hospital grunt work, not training. However, the last couple years have seen very marked increases in the number of local (and necessarily international) medical student spots in Australia. For future years, chances of staying look decreasingly promising.

If you were to get PR and get into General Practice training, you would be stuck in workforce shortage areas (for 10 years starting when you finish internship) and subject to constant relocation. I suspect you would find the quality of such training spotty. The GP training curriculum in Australia is very soft and fuzzy.

Sorry to say, it's a numbers game and the numbers don't look that great on either side of the pond!

 

[pitman]

I just met a doc at Royal Brisbane Hospital who came to Australia from the UK, and is practicing at the RBH, in Brisbane, under the moratorium. She also knows of several docs doing this at PAH, another Brisbane hospital. Logan, very close to Brisbane, is also an Area of Need and eligible for practice under the moratorium. My point is, at least in Queensland, if you can get internship, you won't necessarily be stuck rural, let alone bush -- there are lots of Areas of Need nearby and loopholes for particular positions where there aren't. Those who claim otherwise don't know the situation here.

Internship will be increasingly difficult to get here though, unless the state decides to give preference to all in-state grads equally, but don't count on it.

FP is almost always 4 years post-grad, at least in Queensland. Sometimes it's longer, but sometimes, esp. if done in the bush, it's shorter.

-pitman

 

[sedination]

Internship will be increasingly difficult to get here though, unless the state decides to give preference to all in-state grads equally, but don't count on it.

Sorry, what does this mean exactly? Does it mean if I initially enter UQ as an international student and then within a couple years or so get my PR, It will be more difficult for me to get an internship? And by "more difficult" would that mean I would be getting an internship in some far off rural area or that I wouldn't be able to secure an internship at all?

Also pitman, it seems that you are a med student at UQ, can you comment on the environment of Brisbane and if you've been there any other, more rural areas in Queensland? Would you consider them a good place to live? How's the racism there? I'm an Asian Canadian and I have a friend of a friend who grew up on the Gold Coast as a Chinese-Australian and she said she was discriminated against so much that she actually moved out of the country.

 

[markdc]

Does anyone else suspect this 10 year moratorium is against the Australian constitution? It just seems abnormal that once you gain permanent resident status or even citizenship that you could be treated in such a manner which is so different from the rest of the citizens of Australia.

It perhaps would be different if the person had trained overseas but for a foreigner who has trained here and become a permanent resident it just seems like another form of descrimination to me. It sounds like something that could also be challenged on these grounds if anyone wished to do so.

WRT to racism there are a few Asian-Canadians in my class. I asked one and he said he hasn't noticed anything obvious and in the open. I, myself get an anti-foreigner vibe occasionally. (It seems like there is a love-hate thing going on for the US and everyone assumes me to be American which sometimes is thought of as cool but occasionally has the opposite effect.) Nothing that can't be handled though.

 

[pitman]

Funny that they assume Mark's a Yank, while most try to err on the side of safety and ask if I'm Canadian. Must be his imperialist politics

The Asian-Canadians I know (pretty much the same ones markdc knows) who live in Brisbane have also told me they haven't seen any racism, or at least not more than they've seen in Canadia Land where they're over-running the place. Worst than the Mexicans crawling over the Rio Grande to get to Arnold Land. Just in case anyone's taking me literally here: don't.

Australians pay out everyone, so you certainly can't be thin-skinned and like it here, but at least in the Brisbane area, I wouldn't think you'd be picked out for being Asian.

As far as the rural areas and bush are concerned, it's difficult for me to say whether they're good places to live. I could personally do it, and I rather like the rural areas on the coast. Inland it gets very arid and there's little green for much of the year -- i've been only about 8hours drive west, but that would include many Areas of Need. It gets more and more remote farther out. If you like remote, you'd like it. I'd say similar to small towns in rural New Mexico or Arizona both in terms of culture and geography. As far as race relations in the bush, I dunno. I know there are MANY visiting docs from Asian (and other) countries, from China to S. Korea to India, in the bush, but I've never asked them about the issue.

-pitman

 

[pitman]

Does anyone else suspect this 10 year moratorium is against the Australian constitution?

I've wondered about this. I think you should test it out for us mark.

 

[pitman]

Sorry, what does this mean exactly? Does it mean if I initially enter UQ as an international student and then within a couple years or so get my PR, It will be more difficult for me to get an internship? And by "more difficult" would that mean I would be getting an internship in some far off rural area or that I wouldn't be able to secure an internship at all?

No, if you get PR while a student, first, you'll still pay full-fee (unless you're at the top of the class, in which case you could get a domestic HECS spot that frees up a couple times a year, which is then given to the top full-fee residents). But the real benefit is that you'd get to be in the Ballot, which will guarantee you an internship spot. It's done by computerised preference matching, where students get to shuffle around online for a few weeks changing their prefs in case theirs get filled up. Where there's over-quota at the end, slots get determined randomly (merit does not factor in). You'll still have the moratorium (which applies unless you get PR before matriculating school), but, as said, that's not a death sentence by any means. Even if rural, there are some merits to that type of training -- don't let bozos tell you how to assess them, that's all you.

-pitman

 

[deleted59964]

I've wondered about this. I think you should test it out for us mark.

When the govt brought out the MRBS & rural bonded schemes for domestic students, there was some talk that it was unconstitutional at the time. Something about civil conscription - I'm no lawyer , I wonder if there will be challenges when the time comes

 

[markdc]

When the govt brought out the MRBS & rural bonded schemes for domestic students, there was some talk that it was unconstitutional at the time. Something about civil conscription - I'm no lawyer , I wonder if there will be challenges when the time comes

I would think that it could be challenged. Sounds like something that could be brought by a group representing international students as opposed to an individual. LOL. As for testing it out, I don't think that I would want to be the one to challenge it at the pace that things seem to change here.

I don't know where I am heading after graduation but the moratorium seems fundamentally wrong to me. I could see it as a means of making foreign trained docs go rural but to make students that have become Aus citizens and trained in Aus schools do so seems odd.

In an ideal world doctors would be more free to move between countries. International accreditation of medical training would be a huge step towards that and is something that I think we should all work on.

 

[deleted59964]

In an ideal world doctors would be more free to move between countries. International accreditation of medical training would be a huge step towards that and is something that I think we should all work on.

Nice in theory, but I doubt it'd do much for the doctor shortage in poor countries.

 

[markdc]

Nice in theory, but I doubt it'd do much for the doctor shortage in poor countries.

Often students who go to med schools from poor countries have to sign contracts with their own governments. The Brunei students at UQ are a prime example of that. They sign a contract with Brunei and in turn have their education paid for. This may be the only way for poor nations to ensure they retain docs for a given period of time. International accreditation of universities alone would not neccessarily make it any better or worse for poor nations given the fact that other issues are involved such as english proficiency and work visa hassles.

An aside: I would love to do a year of docs without borders simply for the experience but can't see it financially feasible since I am funded solely through private loans. Might find a way to do it eventually though.

In addition, most of us from developed nations want to live and work in developed nations. Since there are shortages in Aus/Canada/UK/US, international accreditation would provide a means to recruit foreign trained docs. There are plenty of rural docs in Canada that would probably love to work in rural Australia for a few years and vice versa. The exchange would be beneficial in terms of education as well.

However, I may be living in fantasy land when I speak of such ideal scenarios!