Guest pazas Posted August 12, 2005 Report Share Posted August 12, 2005 If you do decide to study medicine in another country, is it true that you'll most likely end up in family medicine if you decide to come back? But would you be able to specialize if you choose to stay in that country? (referring specifically to Ireland) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anish P Posted August 12, 2005 Report Share Posted August 12, 2005 If you stay in Ireland to practice medicine, I'm sure you can go into whatever specialities that the Irish medical authorities offer training/certification for. As for coming back to practice in Canada... the path seems pretty complicated. As far as I know, for Ontario (not sure about the other provinces), if you graduated as an IMG and want to do your residency in Ontario, then you have to apply through the IMG Ontario program (used to be called the Ontario IMG Clearinghouse) instead of through CaRMS. A cursory glance at the stats PDF from their webpage shows that about 1000 IMG's apply... and 5-7% of them actually get into the program. Of those that are accepted, it seems that more than ~50% are offered spots in a Family medicine program... while the other half specialize. So to answer your question, it looks like the majority of IMG's who come back to Ontario do go into Family medicine. Also, if you are accepted into this program, there is a *5-year* "return of service" requirement where you are forced to work in a medically underserviced area, as determined by the MOH-LTC, once you are done the program. Like I said above, I'm not sure about other provinces... each provincial medical association probably has their own policies regarding IMG's... it would be best to contact each individually for more info if you are interested. Anish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pazas Posted August 13, 2005 Report Share Posted August 13, 2005 thanks Anish. that was very helpful! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest marbledust Posted August 13, 2005 Report Share Posted August 13, 2005 If you stay in Ireland to practice medicine, I'm sure you can go into whatever specialities that the Irish medical authorities offer training/certification for. You should look into this more carefully. Here is a number of articles from the CMAJ on international medical graduates. Here is a quote from one of them: So what happens when the Canadians graduate? "Their best bet is to get into the States," he says. For non-US citizens, this means they must be fully licensed, so the Canadians should plan on doing an internship year in Ireland. Once that is done, explains Nealon, it is relatively easy to land a residency position in the US because the country has about 22 000 residency slots but produces only 15 000 new doctors a year. "The Irish students get snapped up for the good residencies," he says. Here is the link to the page with the articles. They are from 2000, so possibly slightly dated. epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201...m#sidebar3 If you are serious about Ireland, I would advise trying to find some official information. You will get good information on this board, but it won't always be 100% accurate. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anish P Posted August 14, 2005 Report Share Posted August 14, 2005 If you stay in Ireland to practice medicine, I'm sure you can go into whatever specialities that the Irish medical authorities offer training/certification for. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough. I assumed the OP was asking: "if I do my med undergrad in Ireland, then what would be the chances of being able to specialize if I stay in Ireland vs. coming back to Canada". What I meant to say is that if you *stay* in Ireland after completing your 4/5/6 years (I'm not sure how long Irish med school lasts) and want to specialize, then you can go into, or at least apply and be on level playing field, to whatever specialities that the Irish medical board offers. On the other hand, if you want to come back to Canada after doing your 4/5/6 years and want to specialize in some RCPSC domain, it's a lot harder (as I was talking about... i.e. going through IMG-Ontario, etc.) Anish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest marbledust Posted August 14, 2005 Report Share Posted August 14, 2005 What I meant to say is that if you *stay* in Ireland after completing your 4/5/6 years (I'm not sure how long Irish med school lasts) and want to specialize, then you can go into, or at least apply and be on level playing field, to whatever specialities that the Irish medical board offers. Is that the official word from Ireland? Because if you read the quote in my last post, as well as the article referenced, it doesn't say you will be on a level playing field with Irish-born/citizen graduates. Admittedly the article is very vague, but it suggests otherwise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anish P Posted August 15, 2005 Report Share Posted August 15, 2005 So what happens when the Canadians graduate? "Their best bet is to get into the States," he says. Hmm... that article you referenced seems to be talking about Canadian-born Irish-educated doctors (CBIED for short ) and going to the USA... maybe they are saying that its a better bet to get into the States than to Canada (assuming CBIED's want to return to North America one way or the other). They could also be implying that it's a better bet to go to the US, than to stay in Ireland... which could suggest some sort of discrimination towards CBIED's staying in Ireland... I'm not sure, really... like you said, the article is kinda vague. Anyways, the only reason I said that CBIED's would be on equal playing field was because before I got in to med school locally, I looked into the Ireland option (I have some family over there), and I spoke with people at RSCI in particular, and I never heard anything about any discrimination towards CBIED's re: specializing in Ireland. But of course, I could be wrong... I didn't investigate that intensively, nor did I contact the Irish national medical authorities directly. Either way, I would definitely agree with you that its always best to contact the schools/med authorities directly to find official information... that way you can't go wrong Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pazas Posted August 19, 2005 Report Share Posted August 19, 2005 thanks guys for the clarification. does anyone know if ireland looks at summer school marks? or how exactly they look at your grades? there's nothing on the website. and is there an advantage to applying earlier or not? i was told it is better to apply in september than january, and i'm not sure how true this info is (the deadline is in february). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest marbledust Posted August 19, 2005 Report Share Posted August 19, 2005 They could also be implying that it's a better bet to go to the US, than to stay in Ireland... which could suggest some sort of discrimination towards CBIED's staying in Ireland... I'm not sure, really... like you said, the article is kinda vague. That is what the article suggests to me: it's better for Canadian grads to go to the US for their residency than stay in Ireland. The problem is the article doesn't really elaborate on why Irish students get picked for the good residencies over non-Irish grads--paraphasing the quote from the article. So I guess the question is are foreign grads at a disadvantage because there are limits on who can apply for residency spots (like here) or do the programs prefer Irish-citizen grads because they are more likely to stay in Ireland to practice? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anish P Posted August 20, 2005 Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 pazas: I'm not sure about the answers to your questions... you may want to try posting in the international med schools forum (here); someone in there might have the answers you are looking for. If I were you, however, I would get in contact with any schools you are particularly interested in, and ask them directly. marbledust: Your questions are right on the money... again, I'm not sure what the answers are. Like I said earlier in the thread, the article is really too vague to speculate as to what they really mean (it's a better bet to go to the US, as opposed to...???). I think we'd need more/other sources of info to come to any sort of reasonable conclusions about this issue... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ian Wong Posted August 20, 2005 Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 That is what the article suggests to me: it's better for Canadian grads to go to the US for their residency than stay in Ireland. The problem is the article doesn't really elaborate on why Irish students get picked for the good residencies over non-Irish grads--paraphasing the quote from the article.The US has a tremendous number of residency spots every year in the match, far in excess of the number of US medical school graduates each year. The bulk of those extra spots are the ones filled by international medical graduates. There's an entire organization in the US devoted to examining your med school credentials, and if you pass certain tests and your med school checks out, you become ECFMG certified. That clears your way to applying for residency positions in the US. www.ecfmg.org www.ecfmg.org/about.html Through its program of certification, the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG®) assesses the readiness of international medical graduates to enter residency or fellowship programs in the United States that are accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).In the US, there's a definite hierarchy when it comes to having your pick of residencies. US medical graduates come first, with the MD schools generally ahead of the DO schools. Canadian medical graduates are somewhere around here (unless you are from U of T or McGill, in which case they may treat you like a US med graduate since both schools are very well known in the US), and after them are the international medical graduates, aka IMG's. The thing is that there are hierarchies even within IMG's. Some residency program directors prefer graduates trained in first-world nations, like the UK or Australia. Others would prefer a US citizen from a Caribbean school (because they may have had good luck with other graduates from that school, and would prefer a resident who is a US citizen without visa issues). Still other residency program directors would rather take graduates from India or Pakistan, on the grounds that many of these applicants have already completed a full residency and may even be staff physicians in their home country, and therefore can function much more independantly at an earlier stage of their training. I think in the world of IMG's, those coming from Ireland are very high up on the list since the medical training is supposed to be very high quality (I've never been there, and haven't worked with many Irish grads, so I can't comment.) For that reason, I think they are generally pretty competitive when applying for US residencies. It's probably not going to happen for you if you're looking for a US Derm spot coming out of an Irish med school, but you'd be in the thick of things for many of the moderately competitive specialties. Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wintersnowflake Posted August 21, 2005 Report Share Posted August 21, 2005 Any thoughts on coming back to Canada after foreign studies and residency in the US? (or possibly after working in the US for a period of time ~5yrs)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest moo Posted August 21, 2005 Report Share Posted August 21, 2005 THe answer to the question of doing residency in the US and coming back to Canada varies greatly. I know for anesthesia, at least, as of last year, it is now possible to be US trained and to be eligible to take the Canadian anesthesia boards, even though the residency is a year shorter. I got this info straight from the horse's mouth... I spoke to the guy who works on these reciprocity things at UBC who apparently said that for anesthesia at least, US grads are now eligible for the Canadian boards and vice versa. This used to not be the case. Anyway, my point is that things can vary specialty to specialty, year to year. (Neurosurg is another example.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pazas Posted August 21, 2005 Report Share Posted August 21, 2005 For that reason, I think they are generally pretty competitive when applying for US residencies. It's probably not going to happen for you if you're looking for a US Derm spot coming out of an Irish med school, but you'd be in the thick of things for many of the moderately competitive specialties. I know I should know this, but when you say specialty and residency, are you referring to the same thing? So do you think that if I really want to do a moderate-high competitive specialty, would I be more competitive in the US than in Ireland if I'm a CBIED? Is one allowed to apply to both the US and Ireland specialties, and then just take whichever works out? Ireland is just a backup if Canada doesn't take me. I personally don't care where I live out of the three countries when I'm done school. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest marbledust Posted August 21, 2005 Report Share Posted August 21, 2005 So do you think that if I really want to do a moderate-high competitive specialty, would I be more competitive in the US than in Ireland if I'm a CBIED? Is one allowed to apply to both the US and Ireland specialties, and then just take whichever works out? Pazas: Unfortunately I don't think you will get the answers you are hoping for in this thread because we don't really have any Irish students or grads who post regularly on this forum. I think somebody already suggested the "International Schools" forum. If you are going to get an answer off these boards, that is the most likely spot to find it. I hope somebody answers your questions, because they would probably be of interest to many others. **Edited for some "problematic" spelling Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ian Wong Posted August 22, 2005 Report Share Posted August 22, 2005 I know I should know this, but when you say specialty and residency, are you referring to the same thing?Yes. So do you think that if I really want to do a moderate-high competitive specialty, would I be more competitive in the US than in Ireland if I'm a CBIED?I'm not quite sure what your acronym means. All I was trying to state was that if you apply for US residencies after coming out of an Irish medical school, you will be considered an IMG (international medical graduate). As such, you will find it much more difficult to attain a very competitive specialty, simply because US medical graduates will generally be preferred by the residency program's selection committee. This is doubly so if you don't have US citizenship, because you need a visa in order to do residency in the US if you are a Canada citizen; it imposes an additional burden upon that program to get you a visa. Is one allowed to apply to both the US and Ireland specialties, and then just take whichever works out?Like marbledust says, I don't have any information on that as I've not got any firsthand experience on that. From what I've heard, it can be very difficult getting an Irish residency as a Canadian, and this is why the vast majority of Canadians who have done med school in Ireland apply for residency spots in the US. Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.