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Ireland vs. Australia


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I have been accepted to a 4 year MD program in both Ireland and Australia. I am having a difficult time deciding which option would be better (even tough I am aware that neither option is great!). It should be mentioned that I have a EU passport so there is a chance of staying in Ireland to do the internship year. However, I am not guaranteed a internship spot as I applied via Atlantic Bridge. Does anyone have any more information on the internship situation for EU passport holders in Ireland? There is also a possibility of staying in Australia but just like Ireland the internship position is not guaranteed. With the internship crisis (more medical schools have opened yet the # of internship spots remained the same)  in Australia it might be even more difficult. Anybody have inside info on what the situation with internships is in Australia atm? My goal is to match back in Canada or the US, although I am open to staying in either Australia or Ireland. Which option would be better with that in mind?

If anyone has some more information on the internship situation in these countries please let me know. Also I would appreciate if you could let me know which option you would pursue and why?

 
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25 minutes ago, YesIcan55 said:

how many times have you applied to Canadian medical schools? if the answer is under 4 times, do not go to either.

I applied twice. In both cases I did not even get a interview. I know that the common advice on premed101 and SDN is that you go to a med school in the country where you want to practice.  At the same time we have to be aware that there are people who have applied to Canadian MD schools for the past 4-6 years and were never able to get an acceptance. Would I really want to explore the IMG route at the age of 30 as opposed to 24-25? 

 

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Also I would appreciate if you could let me know which option you would pursue and why?

 

If I did not get in this year I would have applied again, perhaps moved to a province in the Maritimes or Alberta to gain IP status. If all else failed, I would have pursued another career instead of going the IMG route. It is simply not worth the risk at this point. Things are already so bad in Canada and the US, it's hard to imagine what it will be like for IMG's 4 years down the line.

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12 hours ago, medicalrobot said:

I have been accepted to a 4 year MD program in both Ireland and Australia. I am having a difficult time deciding which option would be better (even tough I am aware that neither option is great!). It should be mentioned that I have a EU passport so there is a chance of staying in Ireland to do the internship year. However, I am not guaranteed a internship spot as I applied via Atlantic Bridge. Does anyone have any more information on the internship situation for EU passport holders in Ireland? There is also a possibility of staying in Australia but just like Ireland the internship position is not guaranteed. With the internship crisis (more medical schools have opened yet the # of internship spots remained the same)  in Australia it might be even more difficult. Anybody have inside info on what the situation with internships is in Australia atm? My goal is to match back in Canada or the US, although I am open to staying in either Australia or Ireland. Which option would be better with that in mind?

If anyone has some more information on the internship situation in these countries please let me know. Also I would appreciate if you could let me know which option you would pursue and why?

 
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I agree a lot with YesIcan55. If you have only applied twice in Canada then you should not go the IMG route. Apply 3 or 4 times minimum before you go off on that path. With that being said if you are still insistent I would choose to go to Australia. I also have an EU citizenship but it doesn't matter anymore because Ireland changed the rules. Contrary to what people have said the internship crisis  in Australia has actually been largely fixed but 4 years from now you can't know what will happen. In NSW this year only 5 international medical graduates did not receive an internship. So the statistics are somewhat favourable https://www.heti.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/485002/Annual-Report-for-Medical-Graduate-Recruitment-for-the-2019-Clinical-Year.PDF

You really need to be realistic about your odds of matching back to Canada though. They are not good and you should be ready to write the USMLE's in order to apply to the USA and/or get ready to stay in Australia. Out of all the Canadians (32 total) who applied through CaRMS, barely more than half matched back.  And you also need to be realistic about which specialties you will likely be able to enter. Unless you have some amazing luck or connections you are pretty much limited to primary care specialties such as pediatrics, family medicine, internal medicine, and psychiatry. I think pathology is also pretty popular for IMG's actually, at least in the USA, according to the NRMP data http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Charting-Outcomes-in-the-Match-2018-IMGs.pdf. Residency in Australia for internationals is not impossible, but you should be prepared to work in a rural area, probably in Northern Territory. If you do  your residency in family medicine though, the process of coming back to Canada is actually pretty straightforward as there are reciprocity agreements between the Canadian and Australian royal colleges. You would not have to "redo" residency or anything like that. Regardless though, if you do this, you need to realize that you will essentially have very little control over where you will live/work for the next 10 years. There is a very real possibility that you won't match in the USA or Canada, and it will be very expensive. You need to weigh just how much you want medicine and why.

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On 6/4/2019 at 11:35 PM, medicalrobot said:

At the same time we have to be aware that there are people who have applied to Canadian MD schools for the past 4-6 years and were never able to get an acceptance

That's true but then we should also be aware of the hundreds of Canadians studying abroad (CSAs)/IMGs who did all that and went to a foreign medical to not receive any interviews for CaRMS residency. If you ask me what I would do, I would echo ysera above - If a few times in med didn't pan out for me,  I would consider another career where I would be happy enough to live my life doing it.

I can appreciate that it's a tough decision, and its entirely yours at the end, but be informed of the pros and cons of each. Speak to those who made it doing the IMG route and those who didn't..get their perspectives as well

All the best!!

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