37 attempts.
I have to say 37 yeah, to get a job.
So I got my first job after my 37th applications.
Hi everyone.
We're here today in sunny Canberra.
It's a nice day in Canberra. A
nd I'm here with dr Naraj soomro also known as
the Outback doctor Australia on YouTube does some fantastic videos
for particularly IMG doctors who are wondering about the process
of working as a doctor here in Australia.
And we've done a collaboration before which was very popular.
We were talking about his journey so far in medicine.
So hello and welcome.
No, thank you very much and very good to meet
up with you.
Great to do a collab.
This is my second collab in Cambra.
I should come here more often.
A, I'm going to run through a few questions with
nod starting with what's he doing here in Canberra and
we haven't told you what I'm doing here in Canberra
yet and then we're going to catch up with him
on terms of where he's up to and his medical
career and ask a few questions about where he's heading.
So now we're at the Australian and New Zealand pre-vocational medical
education forum, which is a long name for a forum,
but it's a medical education conference focusing around particularly the
needs of interns and residents.
PGY one and PGY two doctors.
I'm here mainly as a director of training, although I
did run into wig workshop as well, which I have
to say it was fantastic.
Well thank you.
Yeah.
What are you doing here
and what's your, what's your role So as discussed, we
are, I'm here to attend the form.
Yep.
I think that important.
And I'm also presenting one of my research papers in
the forum.
It's related to the development of, uh, junior doctors and
essentially the role of you do you and how we
can use that.
Now, the important thing in this forum was that you
get a variety of junior doctors that come over here,
but you also get most of the medical workforce managers,
the director of clinical training and people who are at
influential positions in hospitals, particularly related to the recruitment of
junior doctors.
So it's a great forum to network, but they clearly
in places where you want to go in the future
and if you are targeting future placements.
Yeah, absolutely.
And you know, I was going to ask you, do
you think this is the sort of conference that maybe
an IMG who hasn't yet cracked a job in Australia
might want to think about attending for those networking purposes
I think I'd sort of put it is this one
stone that kills multiple birds.
So if you come over here, you end up meeting
up with pretty much all of Australia's medical workforce directors,
and then if you can have a good chat with
them and you've, you've put a face to your name
and that's what you want to do.
Yeah.
So if you're targeting a job through the standard pathway,
you're probably looking for one of these PGY two resident
jobs.
Most of the managers who employ people in those roles,
they are at this conference and most of the directors
of training for those roles are at this conference and
they're having a good time and they're in a social
sort of friendly environment.
So there's no say as you could probably make quite
a few and put a face to your name, which
will, it might, it might help down the track.
Um, just to personalize things and it can be fairly
efficient to do that.
It's not cheap though, is it To get to a
conference like this and it's about a bit over $1,000
just for the registration.
Understand your hospital did help to sponsor you to come.
So that's,
yeah.
Yeah.
So that, that's sort of worked for me.
But I guess if you're looking at, uh, the long
term benefit, it's actually bang for the buck because if
you're going for 80,000, $90,000 job, spending $1,000 on this
sort of forum to get leads and, and the hooks
on a, it's actually not a bad idea to come
down.
And I guess if your other strategy was to like
travel to 10 different towns in Australia and stay overnight,
you're probably gonna spend more money doing that then come
into one conference.
So yeah, thinking about the pre-vocational forum, it's in New Zealand
next year though.
Um, but there'll still be a lot of Australian people
going there.
Um, so, but that might make it a little bit
more expensive still.
So you're enjoying your, your forum so far
Absolutely.
It's been good.
It's been good to be back in Canberra.
I spent some time over here and back in 2012
so it's a found memories of the city has developed
quite a bit now.
Yes.
Yeah.
I did my internship in Cambridge actually, and that was
many moons ago and it has, no, no, thank you.
So last time we caught up with the, you had
just kind of starting a job in Victoria and just
to remind everyone, knowledge is an example of a doctor
who came to Australia, did some other jobs first, had
a bit of a timeout from medicine from his own
country, Pakistan, I think.
And, and then set the AMC a multiple choice exam.
Got, got a pass on that.
And then was I able to apply for a few
jobs, went through a bit of a process of refining
his interview approach, uh, but finally landed a job in
Victoria.
And that, you know, that took a bit of time,
but it is now successfully working here.
So in 37 attempts, I have to say 37 to
10.
So I got my first job after my 37th application
and about 60 interviews, I think five or six interviews.
And uh, and I had a bit of a hiatus
from the clinical careers are about seven years.
I was doing research and teaching and PhD sort of
those sort of stuff.
But then when I decided to get back in, as
you know, in the, from the previous video, it was
a bit of challenge.
But once you land up your first job, then things
are a little bit easier, but not as straightforward.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so how's, you know, since we caught up last
time how things have been going, what sort of, can
you tell us what terms you'd been doing, the sort
of supervision you've been getting, what you've been learning, um,
how's it going with the, the rest of the standard
pathway process
Yeah.
So, uh, in your first job in Australia, it's likely
that you'll end up in a role in ed with
the same emergency department and, uh, and as we discussed
previously as well, it's also likelihood that you may get
a job in psychiatry and some other specialties where there
is a bit of a dread of doctors.
So, uh, you, you get, uh, get that first job
and I got that first job in 82.
I've pretty much done, uh, four terms of ed and
a time of psychiatry.
Uh, however, the problem with doing those terms is that
you cannot get a general registration.
So what the medical board wants opera warrants is did
for you to do all the terms that an intern
does.
And obviously you can get an intern job in Australia
and an intern would typically do three core terms, which
will involve surgery, medicine and ed.
So what I've done is I've done, I had an
extended, um, of ed, uh, but I haven't done any
medicine, not surgery.
So, so to get my January registration I have to
do, find a job which offers middle stumps.
Okay.
Then we will get to that in a sec cause
I think you're going to be moving jobs to get
those terms.
So a big, so now I just neatly covered a
couple of key questions that I often get asked.
One is how do I get an intern job Because
this is you when you go to the medical board
website, you read this thing about having to do intern
type terms, but just to clarify, they're now just working
in a resident role but he's doing similar terms under
supervision that are, that an intern would do and as
you said, emergency medicine surgery are the terms that the
medical board want to see.
So he's got his emergency done.
He just needs to get some medicine and surgery and
actually have to get I think 48 weeks total as
well with some other terms.
Then the other question is what if I get offered
a job that doesn't offer me those terms
Well, um, when I, when I think we're now, Joe
asked me this question.
I say just take the job because generally the hospital
will try and get you the other terms you need.
They, they don't want to let you down once you're
there an employee or they will understand if they can
offer you those jobs.
If you have to go elsewhere to get the extra
rotations, which I think is what's going to happen for
no, but before we get on to next year, tell us
a little bit about the process with opera and meeting
the requirements.
Um, now that you're under this provisional process of obtaining
general registration to the standard part.
Yeah.
So my, my pathway was slightly different.
Most IMGs actually go through the AMC one, which is
the MCQ and then do the AMC clinical.
However, I feel that doing the clinical without having Australian
context is a bit challenging.
So I took the limited registration route, which basically means
that I did them sick.
You ended up getting a RM or equal end job.
And during that job, if I do those terms, as
we discussed, then I automatically get the general registration so
I don't have to go on a provisional registration.
Uh, so the idea is that I complete my 48
weeks and then do those additional terms if I have
to, uh, because I wasn't able to complete those rotations
within the 48 weeks.
And once I've done that, then I'll apply for that.
Yeah.
So national probably we'll have to, um, extend his limited
registration so that he's got some, yeah, for another year to
get those terms.
And that's generally okay.
Just a, I guess to clear up there.
So now I just got the AMC MCQ part one.
He needs to still achieve the certificate.
There's two routes for doing that.
There's to sit the clinical exam, which you can do
whilst you're working as we've demonstrated a, although there's an
alternative pathway, isn't there And I think that's the one
that you're investigating at the moment.
Absolutely.
I think, I think they'll alternate native pathways a good
part for in the follow up because you actually get
an exemption from doing the exam.
Yep.
And what does better than that Yeah.
You know what I mean So you're working in a
busy clinical yet.
And then on top of that you have to do
exams.
It's a bit challenging and daunting.
So that alternative part is getting a job in a
hospital that supports the work based assessment program or the
WBA program.
So what we can do is we can put a
link of w me and hospitals down in the description.
Yeah.
So essentially in a nutshell, if you end up getting
a job in the WBA hospital, then you will go
through that program, which is essentially nine month program or
takes up to 12 months.
If you do those 12 months, you automatically get an
exemption from the clinical exam and you end up getting
the general registration.
Yeah.
So it's, it's not a hundred percent guarantee.
Uh, so firstly you have to be in a hospital
that offers it.
And just because you get a job in that hospital
doesn't necessarily mean that you get enrolled in that program.
Although generally that's the case and it is pretty rigorous,
but it's based on your performance at work.
So generally what they do is require you to do
a number of WBI assessments, usually a multi-source feedback at
the start, at and towards the end so that you
get some feedback on how you're performing and how can
you can improve.
And then usually a whole series of what's called mini
CX as mini clinical exams.
Stuff like a structured short case, again, where you get
feedback and case-based discussions where again, you get feedback on
cases that you present.
And so the whole purpose of that is that some
of them you might, those assessments you might actually fail,
but that is to help your learning and help you
to know how to improve.
And so long as you can meet the standards at
the end for those assessments, then they're happy that you're
meeting the standard of an intern and has been demonstrated
in the workplace, which is actually more rigorous than doing
a formal clinical exam.
So that's the whole point.
A lot of people know about this process and they
want to get into WBA hospital and they know that
the results for the WBA program are closer to 100%
versus the clinical being about 28% so there's a stark
difference.
You may say, well that's, that's quite a difference.
You know, maybe there's something going on there.
But I think one of the other reasons why you
see people being successful through the WBA program is that
basically if you weren't going to be successful with the
WBA pathway, the hospital is probably not going to recruit
you in the first place.
So they're probably taking, doctors have taken the time to
prepare themselves for the Australian context and thinking about not
just the medical knowledge you need, but the communication skills
and the teamwork skills, et cetera as well.
I think that's a very important point.
So what, uh, the, one of the mistakes that IMGs
make is directly apply to the WVU hospitals.
And that's very unlikely for your first job in Australia
getting into the WVU hospital would be, would it be
like one, one in a thousand Johns So, so the
best route is something along the lines of what I've
done.
Go and get into a hospital, any hospital because not
in WB a hospital, do some time in that hospital,
six months to a year and do a good job.
You do a good job, get, get some references and
then apply for the WPA program.
And I can actually tell you that I only applied
to one WVU hospital and the first application.
Yeah.
It's so much easier once you've proven that you can
work as a doctor in Australia to get the next
job.
Yeah.
It's like I'm,
although although a, you helped me out in the interview,
so I have
well that, that's great.
I mean, I mean I think, uh, it was Casey Neistat,
I watched a YouTube video and you talked about the
first 1000 subscribers was much harder than the next 10,000.
It's a bit like that.
The first job is the hardest job, I think particularly
for an IMG.
Once you've done that, it's so much easier to get
the next one.
So long as you, you know, sincere and do your
first job, well, you'll get good references.
The hospitals will see that you're working successfully and they'll
go, okay, well that person, that doctor has proven themselves,
they're much better candidate than someone who's not worked in
medicine in Australia.
Yeah.
So I'm glad that you're doing so well and you've
got this chance to do the WBA program.
So tell us about the supervisor reports you have to
do for the medical board when you're under this limited
registration.
Yeah, so my understanding is that the medical board requires
at least two reports from the hospital, which, which actually
means reports are from your supervisor at the hospital.
And it varies from state to state.
In hospital, the hospital, the hospital I work at work
at, uh, prefer to send the reports directly to opera.
However, it may vary from other hospitals and where you
may have to do that.
So, uh, I guess the simple answer to this is
if you're not sure, ring opera
and is your professional responsibility to get them put in
there Not too difficult to fill in.
I'm mainly your supervisors.
Do most of them.
Uh, and though again, the multidimensional about your communication, your
knowledge, respect for patients, that sort of stuff.
I think the first one has to be done by
the first three months and as long as they're happy
with how you're tracking, then there's another one towards the
end of the 12 months.
And so, uh, what's your, you know, you obviously next year
focusing on getting to the general registration.
What are your plans after that going forward
Yeah, I think I'm thinking about two different career paths
and I'm unsure at this point of time.
A couple of colleges that I've looked at are the
college of sports medicine.
So that's, that's my number one.
Number two is going to be general, general practice.
So that's very attractive.
Lot of flexibility job wise, you know, you can work
anywhere you want.
Very much so.
So that's another I am looking at.
Then the third one, which is a difficult speciality to
get in, however very lucrative and the work is pretty
good, which is radiology, which I figured out in Australia.
So the radiologists are, uh, very well sought after.
Yeah.
But it's difficult especially to get in.
So I need to do a bit of digging in
and figuring out whether that's another area I would go
into.
But the idea is to first get your general registration
and cross that bridge when you come to it.
Great.
Well now thank you very much for catching up with
me here in Canberra.
It's good to see you in person, uh, and, uh,
hope you enjoyed this video and you got a lot
out of it.
And I hope to do some more videos with nudge
and I'll see you in the next video.
Oh yeah.
Before we go and make sure you click the like
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And then I'll see you in the next video.