Want to know what the pathways to working
as a general practitioner are in Australia. Well watch this video.
Hey there guys, Dr Anthony Llewellyn here back with another video on YouTube.
I'm the career doctor.
I'm a real doctor who knows HR not about
the medical career process here in Australia.
Now I'm here to help you with managing your medical career whether it be YouTube,
LinkedIn, Facebook and a few other platforms as well.
Another platform you can find me is the AdvanceMed blog.
And a couple of years ago we had an expert GP write a blog on GP training
and the various pathways, for particularly international medical
graduates to go into General Practice.
What I want to focus on in this video is
the particular pathways for qualified GPs from other countries to be recognised
by colleges here in Australia and get into specialist General Practice practice.
However, if you're wanting some more information about some of the alternate
pathways, maybe you're a doctor who works in General Practice but doesn't,
for example, have qualifications in general Practicpracticee.
There are some alternate routes for international medical graduates
to give into general Practise, usually through alternate training routes.
So this is one of the problems General
practice is probably one of the most
confusing specialties in medicine in Australia
in terms of understanding what your options are.
But let's try and simplify it a little bit
and explain some of the complexity for you.
So the first thing you need to know is
that if you're a specialist general practitioner from another country,
you can be assessed as per ther specialist pathway similar to all the other specialists
that can be assessed by the other colleges in Australia for specialist
comparability.
And you might want to check out some of my other videos on that topic,
includipracticeng the series on the specialist pathway.
But the first confusing aspect is
there are actually two colleges for general Practise in Australia.
There's the Australian College
of Rural and Remote Medicine, which is the smaller College.
It is essentially a
general Practice College with a focus on rural and remote medicine.
But actually you can become a qualified general practitioner through this College
and work anywhere as a general practitioner.
And then you've got the more established
College, which is the Royal Australasian College
of General Practitioners, the RACGP, which is probably the
College that most specialist GPs will apply via because in order to apply versus
the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine,
you do have to show some extra credentials around particularly rural and remote
Practice and perhaps having some extended skills and that sort of thing.
But you have two options and you should probably check out both of them
if you're thinking of applying.
The first thing is how do we find
the appropriate pages on both sites in terms of where we go about applying
and finding out information? Well, if we go to the RACGP,
site. It's a little bit tricky because it's like education.
Whatever up here and you Hover over that.
Nothing happens. From a user interface perspective.
If anyone from the College
of General Practitioners is watching, I would suggest you want to fix your
header bar here because it's a little bit hard to find things because you have
to actually click on that to reveal the sub header bar.
Now, normally on a website
one would expect that if I hovered that, things would appear and that might
make it easier for people to find the information.
That's the first trick. You can of course
Google RACGP Specialist Assessment and you'll probably find a landing page.
Although again,
some of the pages are a little bit hard to find on this particular site.
So this is where we go: education > IMGs > click on that.
And then we'll see a few options here.
Now I mentioned there were some other routes, one of these is called
the General Practice Experience Pathway, that is for basically doctors who have
general Practice experience but don't have qualifications.
Today.
We're talking about specialist GPs in their own right, in their own country.
So we'll click on fellowship programs for IMGs.
We'll get to a landing page that talks
about how they closed their recent program last year.
And now they've got a new one called
The Practice Experience Program. Its a self-directed education programme designed
to support non vocationally registered doctors on their pathway to fellowship.
Okay, that's a bit confusing because
you're already a specialist and you are applying by this pathway. But
We will click on this.
So it's supporting non registered doctors on the journey to RACGP Fellowship.
There's two streams.
First, applicants who do not hold a specialist qualification apply
to the standard stream, so that's the old experienced pathway.
So that's the standard stream there. Okay.
And then we've got the one that we are interested in is applicants with a
specialist qualification who apply through the specialist stream.
So we click on the specialist stream, and then we get some more information here.
So the Practise Experience Programme
specialist stream is for international medical graduates with a recognised
overseas qualification who wish to qualify for the fellowship of the College
of General Practice and applications are now open.
Okay, there's lots of information here.
Things like fees where you can work, frequently asked questions I encourage you
to have look at all the tabs, the one that you want to look at.You
think the comparability assessment might
be the place you want to go, but I can tell you that you start going
down a bit of a rabbit hole when you go into this one.
Although it does explain the potential outcomes and what that means
for you in terms of substantially, partially and not comparable.
But I would suggest you want to start out here under the eligibility tab.
And so this is the useful information
because basically the way. And this is another difference with both the College
of General Practice, the Royal Australasian College, as well as
the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine.
They have looked at similar programs in other countries and made an assessment
of their comparability, which is different than most other colleges.
Most other colleges will just assess
candidates based on the information that they provide in their application.
They don't go to the process of reviewing
the actual program that the person has done.
And you can see here that they have ranked qualifications from other countries
in terms of being assessed as substantially comparable,
partially comparable, and then finally not comparable, which is a very long list.
And I think the way they do this is they've probably done all the main ones
that they've had applications from in the past.
But if you don't see yours on the list,
that probably means they haven't had anyone from that particular country yet.
As it says, if your specialist qualification is not
listed above, we have not assessed the curriculum.
Your curriculum must be assessed.
To do that, you must provide the following
official copy of your training organisation curriculum,
a letter confirming that it is their curriculum, et cetera, et cetera.
And then they will as assess it for you
So in order to be deemed substantially comparable.
And remember, substantially comparable is ,he thing you're aiming for,
hopefully because that usually means twelve months peer review with no exams,
you have to have a qualification from Canada.
The Hong Kong, Ireland counts.
Malaysia counts Malta accounts.
New Zealand obviously counts as well as the United Kingdom.
Interestingly, the US is not on that list.
It is on the list below.
I wonder why that's the case. Part of the reason or rationale
reason probably is that the length of training for the Board
of Family Medicine is probably shorter than in Australia, I think maybe,
but it's only partially comparable, which is interesting.
And they've also got Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.
And then we've got a long list that are not. Including Belgium, two of them Germany,
India, which is interesting.
The DNB is a quite prestigious qualification.
Kenya, Latvia, Nigeria, et cetera.
And interesting, down the bottom, the international membership
for the College of General Practice in the UK does not count.
Okay, that's a common question I get.
What does that mean in terms of how you get assessed?
This is the other interesting thing.
The apply page is here
steps you three your steps.
There's a comparability assessment
which takes up to ten weeks after you put in your application.
Now the unique feature of the College of General Practice is they don't interview.
They might contact you for more
information according to their website, but they basically do a paper based
assessment and then give you the outcome after ten weeks.
But that's not the only thing.
You then need to have an appropriate job offer which has the right scope
of Practice and that gets reviewed by the RACGP, and if approved,
you can then apply for medical registration and you can also start
to apply for your provider number wishes essential in general practice.
And so that's how it works.
In terms of comparability assessment,
the outcome substantially comparable you need to meet these requirements which are as follows.
So the substantially comparable requirements.
So you have to commence work within six
calendar months of signing on the agreement.
You provide some evidence of basic life support and advanced life support.
There's a workplace based assessment program workplace-based where someone external reviews
your performance to make sure that you are up to standard and you have to complete.
I think somewhere it says complete twelve months... Yeas achievecommencing fellowship within
twelve months of commence employment with a maximum time of 24 months allowance.
So it's all done in work.
Okay. If we are partially comparable, there's a different set of requirements.
You have to complete at least six months full time equivalent Practise.
You have to provide the basic life in advance life support course
certificates, and then you also have to pass essentially all the colleges
exams so that you have a maximum 48 months to complete that and you achieve
fellowship within 24 months with at time limite of 48 months.
If we hop over now to the Australian College of
Rural and Remote Medicine, where do we find the information about IMG?
Again, this should Hover and pop up stuff because look, reveal big reveal. Anyway.
So this is fellowship, then they've got pathways, other avenues.
So this is a little bit unclear as well. I think. So.
Here's the specialist pathway anyway.
Okay, so let's look at the information here.
So the specialist pathway leads to specialist registration
in the specialty general practice and fellowship of the College.
Doctors who have ACRRM recognised overseas applications in general practice
or family medicine may apply for assessment.
This includes Canadian and New Zealand GP
specialists under Ad Eundum Gradum arrangements.
So I'm not sure what that means.
Let's just Google that I have not come across
that term before. A degree confirmed by Senate without examination.
Okay. grandfathering.
Okay, so they've been grandfathered
into the College because in some cases the specialties of general practice are
fairly new and so they've just been conferred as a GP because they've been
working prior to the development of the specialty.
Okay.
And so again, it starts with assessing the qualification that you've done.
So let's have a look at the list.
I think it's a fairly similar list.
We'll get the GP list up for the Collge of
General Practice up as well and and compare the two.
So on the ACRRM Codified list
you will be eligible to be assessed if you've got one of these.
Okay, first thing
the Belgian Master, master.
Okay, I think that's a different qualification.
Special certificate in general practice.
So obviously no one asked for that to be
maybe assessed by the Royal Australasian College.
I don't know. It looks like they have actually.
So there's a discrepancy Canada.
Well, that's recognised by the RACGP as well.
Denmark, Hong Kong, Ireland the Netherlands. So
they don't tell you which is substantial or partial because again, well,
there's a different price of assessing you after that.
But you can see similar things on this
list to the RACGP substantially comparable list
and partially comparable with and again, I think there's a process that if your
degree is not there, you can ask for it to be assessed, so that's the list.
And then there's the codified list criteria.
Now. You can assessed. Yourbe criteria for assessment with a College of rural RMO
is a fellow is a medical specialist who has been assessed meeting the
standards for providing high quality rural generalist medical practice.
So it's a little bit more than just standard general practice.
So this involves being able to provide
emergency care and specialised medical care.
To community needs safe care,
within working in geographic and professional isolation,
working with Aboriginal and Torres, State Islander and other groups.
So they assess you for these eight domains.
And you have to have had three years experience providing clinical care away
from ready access to specialist medical diagnostic and allied health services.
So that's kind of their test.
I think of whether you've worked in a kind or rural regional or remote location.
So their assessment process is covered
over in the guide and you can read this at your leisure.
But there's the criteria
Here is the application process, the eligibility
and the eligibility for the curriculum
and the assessment is this is where it's different.
It's more standard to the other specialist pathways.
There's a paper basedthat assessment and then
a structured interview which clarifies your application basically.
Okay. And then you get your outcome.
And so your outcome
again you are either going to be substantially partially or not comparable.
If you're substantially comparable,
you need to do twelve months full time equivalent with a minimum three months
with a supervisor approved by the College.
And it may include a workplace based assessment.
Okay. And then if it's partially comparable,
you need to undertake up to a maximum 24 months supervised Practice for a minimum
of six months and further training, or a supervisor approved by the College,
and you may well have to take examinations with the College and then nonnon-comparable comparable.
You're not eligible for the pathway, basically.
So the last thing to look at is the fees.
So let's just get those both up because the fees aren't insubstantial to be
assessed for these pathways for any College.
So
if you're applying through
the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, then
your application is going to cost you $575 Australian dollars.
It is. If you're on the program and this includes your workplace place
assessment, you'll have to pay another $2,000.
Now you may be able to negotiate for your
employer to pay that for you, or you'll definitely be able to claim that on tax.
At that point.
There's also a membership fee, and if you are partially comparable,
you will have to pay for the exams and a total almost $10,000 to do so.
So a difference.
Again, a good incentive to get substantial comparable is the difference in total
costs of the two pathways and then over in the College of rural
and remote, there's an application fee which is a little bit bigger.
And then there is a paper based assessment fee.
There's as a little asterisk there GST free.
wonder why that's GST free? But anyway, and then there's a structured interview fee.
There's a session you have to pay with a medical educator as well.
Prior to commencement of the pathway.
And if you have to do case based discussions,
they cost you $665.
There's also ongoing support fee, and there might be other fees like if
there's a review of your progress or something like that.
And then there's a full list of ACRRM assessments as well.
So again, not an insubstantial thing.
Probably up to this point, you will have to pay for that yourself.
And once you get a job, you may be to negotiate for some of these
costs to be paid or again, they will be claimable on tax.
I have no idea why some of these are GST free.
There you go. So that's the two colleges of general
Practice in Australia and how you go about applying through the specialist pathway.
If you are a qualified general
practitioner in another country, again, depending on how we go with this video
in terms of numbers of likes, let's say again, maybe 50 likes or so.
I might do a separate video that goes through the alternate routes
for working as a general practitioner say, if you're experienced in general
practice, but you don't have a qualification in another country.
So thanks for watching the video.
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