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How to get into internship/residency in Australia? Tips and tricks for Malaysians' doctors! Part 2 of 2

Picture 1: Evening running after work Thank you for the overwhelming support in the first part of my article. So the question now is that? How can you apply for work in Aussie as a doctor? What are some of the tips and tricks to tackle this? In order to arrive to this step, you must first be qualified to apply for a job as a doctor in Australia. This means that you need to be eligible to be registered with AHPRA. Please refer to the flowchart in my first article to learn more about this ( click here ). Once you are eligible to apply for a job, next you need to know these: Each of the states in Australia would have their own recruitment campaign that will usually be made known online between May to July each year. You would need to create an individual account for each of the health system, e.g. Victoria, Queensland, Northern Territory, etc in order to lodge your application with their state department of health. At this point of time, you must know which hospital in that state that you...
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How to get into internship/residency in Australia? Tips and tricks for Malaysians' doctors! Part 1 of 2

Picture: My Queensland Health staff card


The question that I often get asked is that: is it hard to get a job in Australia as a doctor? The answer is NO. It is not hard to land a job here in Australia as a qualified doctor. Let me explain it in detail in this write up. 

Before that, some background info about myself, I am a class of 2020 graduate of Monash University with MBBS (Hons) and published first authorship paper. I did my house officer training in Malaysia with Hospital Canselor Tuanku Muhriz (HUKM) before I decided to join Queensland Health for training in emergency medicine. 

First and foremost, one need to understand that there are two important bodies for doctors in Australia:
  • Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA): For registration and regulation of doctors and other healthcare professionals in Australia. Basically, you need to get AHPRA registration number in order to practice as a doctor in Australia. 
  • Australian Medical Council (AMC): For regulation of medical training and education in Australia. In another word, if you are not a graduate of an Australian/New Zealand (NZ) medical school, you will need to sit for AMC exam and passed Part 1 and Part 2 in order to be eligible to be registered with AHPRA.
So what are your options here? Generally speaking, if you are not a graduate of an Australian/NZ medical school, you would need to sit for an AMC exam in order to be eligible to be registered before you can even apply for a job in Australia. The followings are the options which are available as off this write up in order to be registered with AHPRA:
  • Competent Authority Pathway: You are eligible for this pathway if you are a graduate of an Australian/NZ medical school, or if you are not a graduate of an Australian/NZ medical school, you must have gained a full registration with any of the recognised medical councils in the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland or the United States. Read more (here) for this pathway.
  • AMC Pathway: If you are an international graduate of any medical school recognised by the World Directory of Medical School, you may be eligible to sit for the AMC exam. This applies even if you have gained full registration with a medical council in a non-recognised country, e.g. Malaysian Medical Council. Once you have passed the two parts of the exam, you may be eligible to be registered with AHPRA. Read more (here) for AMC exam.
In another word, if you have done your house officer training in Malaysia, and if you are a graduate of an Australian/NZ medical school such as Monash University, you can proceed under the Competent Authority Pathway. To illustrate further, I will outline a few scenario below:
  • If you have done your house officer training in Malaysia, but you are a graduate of any other Malaysian medical school such as UM or UKM, you can proceed under the AMC pathway since you are not eligible for the Competent Authority Pathway.
  • If you are a graduate of a Malaysian medical school and has gone to Ireland to do your internship, having gained the Irish Medical Council full registration, you can now proceed under the Competent Authority Pathway since your registration with the Irish Medical Council has superseded your primary qualification which is not recognised.  
Flowchart 1: Eligibility for full registration with AHPRA

Now that you have understood of how the registration works, how can you apply for a job in Australia then as a doctor? For internship, each of the states in Australia would open their application for internship circa April/May timeframe and usually it is very competitive and quite unlikely you will land a place in internship unless you are an Australian/NZ medical school graduate. 

As for residence, the job application for each of the states in Australia would usually be advertised and open circa June/July timeframe. Resident medical officer (RMO) campaign would usually offer higher probability of success for international applicants.

What would you need in order to apply for the job? What are some of the tips and tricks to apply for the job? I will elaborate more on this in my next posting on the weekend of 21/01/2023. Please follow and direct message me on twitter should you have any questions, I am happy to answer if any.

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