User:Chaitanyakotapati/Accreditation process for International Medical Graduates

International Medical Graduates
International Medical graduates(IMG) is the term used to describe doctors who leave the country where they completed the undergradution and sometimes postgraduation studies in medicine and move to another country either for higher postgraduation studies or for employment purposes.

Some countries like USA, UK and Canada have entry exams like USMLE or PLAB which allows the overseas graduates to gain local registration in order to practice medicine in these respective countries.Subsequently once they obtain the local registration most of these doctors are allowed to continue their employment and training towards their respective specialties.

Australia and Newzealand have started to reorganise their regulation and accreditation process of the overseas doctors and are currently in the process of establishing a National registration board that regulates the registration process of all the doctors practicing medicine in Australia.

Some of these International Medical Graduates are fully qualified specialists from overseas.The overseas qualifications are only considered as partailly equaivalent in countries like Canada,Ireland, Newzealand and Australia.

Specialist Colleges
The overseas specialists especially the international medical gradutes(IMG) will need to submit their overseas specialist qualifications for accreditation by the respective colleges in Australia or Newzealand before they commence their training in their interested field (specialty)of Medicine

Each specialty holds their specialist college eg: Royal College of Anaesthetists for anaesthesia and intensive care in the UK or College of Intensive Care Medicine for critical care Medicine in Australia or Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in Dublin.

Each college holds the peer group of the fully qualified specialists as its members as well as the executive committee.The training programmes for each specialty is designed by the respective colleges which also conducts the exit examination before the completion of training which allows the trainee doctor to be labelled as a specialist or a Fellow when he/she completes the specialist training.

Accreditation Process
These colleges are also actively involved in screening the overseas qualifications of specialist doctors who are International medical graduates. The accreditation committees comprise a group of senior doctors in each faculty or speciality. The senior doctors comprising the accrediation commmittee will verify the overseas qualifications and the curriculum vitae(CV) of the overseas specialists before submitting the final assesment report to the College.The college training committte will subsequently design the course of further training for these doctors based on the outcome of the assesment of the assesment report whether their qualifications from overseas are deemed to be partially comparable or uncomparable.

In majority of situations these assesment reports are fair and justified.The accreditation process is based on well designed and strict guidelines.Most of the International Medical graduates will end up doing few additional years of training in their interested specialty as adviced by the college before becoming a full specialist in the new country.

There have been a few reports recently in Australia that some of the colleges have been very inconsistent and unfair in the assesment process of overseas specialists seeking specialist positions in Australia.

In a recent parliamentary debate an urgent senate inquiry was demanded by the honorable members of parliament at a parliamentary meet in September,2010.

A senate inquiry may help in stream lining of the process of accreditation process of overseas specialists seeking specialist positions in Australia and also ensure that these processes are transparent and completely fair.