How to get externships?

Faizan@ · 12-19-2007, 02:18 AM

There has been a lot of discussion about the importance of clinical or research electives for the US residency program. You can do electives while you are still in medical school. But I heard most of the residency programs in US now have a requirement for atleast 3 months clinical experience. Which you can get by doing externships in US after graduation, in which you can have hands-on clinical experience but they are quite difficult to get, and observerships are not considered an alternative to them.So can anyone tell me that which hospitals/medical schools offer externships to IMGs? Specially in fields like internal medicine and surgery?

MastahRiz · 12-19-2007, 04:21 PM

Yeah, here's a link that has them all actually.

U.S. medical colleges that accept international students for clinical electives

Faizan@ · 12-20-2007, 06:41 AM

hey mastahriz,You are still a student so probably you do not have the information about externships or clinical work done after graduation, the link given in that thread is actually about clinical electives offered by the medical schools in US, not about the externships or clincal experience after graduation. Do answer to this thread if someone does have information regarding externships/clerkship after graduation, how and from where to get them?

MastahRiz · 12-20-2007, 08:03 AM

It's rare to find a place that will allow you to get clincal experience after graduation. Usually the most you can do after graduation is an observership, and that doesn't count for experience I'm afraid.

If there are places that will allow it though, you're sure to find them through that link above, as they're the same school that accept IMG students for electives. They'd probably be the most willing for externships, but like I said, it's rare to get clinical experience after graduation. You have to do these sorts of things during medical school.

More commonly, graduates will go on to do research and get research experience, but again, clinical experience doesn't come with it unless you somehow get an unoffical acceptance to do some shadowing and assisting in a clinic.