International doctors in Australia are sometimes referred to as OTDs, Overseas Trained Doctors.
They go by this name because they were trained in a different country other than Australia.
Australia is known for its lack of medical practitioners since the dawn of time. They have been like this for a long while, especially in the rural regions of the country.
Based on what they face, the Australian government has been an encouragement to those who want to come and practice in their country from other foreign countries.
It isn’t frowned upon for immigrants to come and become doctors, although you have to go through some procedures before you are given the license to practice.
Australia has always opened its arms to collect and welcome a good amount of doctors from foreign countries.
They mostly collect from countries like the UK, India, Malaysia, China, and New Zealand.
Since they have been doing this for a long time, the number of foreign or overseas trained doctors have increased drastically in the country.
Sometimes when comparing the number of specialists employed or the percentage total of people employed, you see that Australia has more than half of them coming from outside. This has been reoccurring over the years.
Licensing And Registration Of International Doctors Who Want To Practice In Australia
Graduates and medical practitioners from other foreign countries who wish to have their license to study in Australia have to go through the Australian Medical Council (AMC) assessment pathway appropriately.
For the standard pathway, an International Medical Graduate (IMG) or Overseas Trained Doctor is urged to sit through a number of assessments.
Among the assessments is the AMC Multiple Choice Question Exam and an AMC Clinical Exam. These are the assessments you go through for the AMC.
For the MCQ, you have 150 questions to answer and they are all marked by the computer while the clinical involves you doing 10 out of 16 problems which will consist of 2 pilot issues.
Those overseas trained doctors who are able to scale through the AMC assessment examination can now go further to register for the Australian specialty training positions.
The Australian Government is currently working on a way to establish a national registration procedure for every doctor who is somewhat involved with the medical board of Australia.
Some years ago, the minister for health and ageing in Australia agreed to send in an inquiry procedure for overseas trained doctors.
The Immigration Policies For Overseas Trained Doctors Who Want To Study In Australia
Australia has a strict immigration policy and this has been its issue for decades now, in Australia, immigrants have to go through series of assessments and some things were involved with the assessments.
What we mean is, immigrants were being assessed bases on their education and profession.
For some time, Australia had an immigration policy that only involved whites getting through the borders, it was called the white Australian policy.
Well, it ended after some time and then they started allowing coloreds in their country.
Although, most of the immigrants were doctors mostly from India who wanted to practice in Australia.
Although Australia has been in need of medical practitioners and the government has been a huge encouragement to foreign doctors coming in to practice there, some areas are off limits for immigrants even with the lack of this commodity.
The government of Australia and the medical association have seen just how necessary or how badly they need OTDs.
Although they need the doctors, they still believe in training these foreign doctors locally and assessing them too.
In 2016, they tried to reduce the number of doctors migrating by taking out a number of them from the office.
Bottom line is that the plan didn’t work because they only took out a very small amount of them.
Some Issues Faced By Foreign Medical Practitioners In Australia
Most people say or think that since Australia wants to employ overseas trained doctors, it is simpler to get to the top as a foreign doctor than it is to make it to that point as a local doctor in Australia.
Well, this theory might be true but sometimes they face issues in Australia as foreigners, may not presently because of the way the world has evolved now.
The colored foreign doctors have faced discrimination issues from the time they were being accepted into the country. It is just not rampant right now.
The qualifiers for the training process in Australia used to consist of mostly white immigrants and home-based Australian medical graduates while the non-whites were usually picked at minimum.
This problem with the assessment program was always an issue and once they were criticized for it so taking a wild guess, they stopped because they have no reason to do that anymore.
Do Doctors Receive Good Salaries In Australia?
Although rumors are flying around that doctors in Australia are paid a minimum amount and not what they are supposed to be paid.
That isn’t true, immigrants won’t keep going there if they didn’t pay well.
Payment is determined by your specialty and experience plus some other criteria
Doctors in Australia are started with a payment of 300 to 500k dollars and it increases as they advance. This is just an estimation.
Is It Advisable To Move To Australia As A Doctor?
Yes, it is, it is also advisable to make sure you take the 482 visa when migrating to Australia as a doctor. It is what most doctors use now when migrating over there.
This is as iced because, with this visa, you can gain a permanent residency paper after some years of your stay there.
Conclusion
To sum up all that has been said here, we can say that one major thing that is true here is that foreign doctors who wish to practice and gain their license in Australia have to go through the Australian medical assessment qualifications before being permitted to practice.