The popular idea is to take ‘a year out’. Work for a few months here, travel for a few months there, work for a few more months here. And it’s a great idea! But I’m just not sure quite how feasible it is these days. Many of the places where I applied wouldn’t look at any applications of less than 12 months. Some people I know have got 6 months placements and do plan to do the travelling thing. But I was more into the idea of emigrating permanently, so this didn’t bother me too much. Just be aware when applying, you may want to make yourself available for 12 months (at least initially, once you’ve got the job, you could always quit early… (you didn’t hear that here).

Now, being medics, we are generally the organized, planning, goal setting types. And the problem with applying for a job in Australia and New Zealand, is that their schedule just doesn’t tie in with ours very well.

The ‘doctor year’ in the UK generally runs August to August, with perhaps a few exceptions here and there. In Australia it runs January to January, and in New Zealand, its November to November.
This means it’s difficult to get something to start in August. There are some positions, but not many. It’s like trying to get a 3 or 6-month job to start in April in the UK.
The different start date also means that you might not get any jobs or job offers until July or August – just weeks or days before your current UK job finishes.
So, rule number one:
1)    Do not panic!
Right about now (November/December) you friends (and maybe you too) will all be applying for various specialties, allover the place. People will be talking about it a lot. Deadlines. CVs. Portfolios. Audits. Interviews. Exams. It can get a bit stressful, if you are seemingly doing nothing whilst your peers are running at full speed competing against each other. So chill out. Your plan isn’t to apply right now. You aren’t competing against these people. But you can still use this time to prepare your CV and start firing out some emails. You’re going to be sending a lot of emails.

Don’t panic even if you haven’t got a job come next August. From August to Christmas, the job offers come in thick and fast. Many of my friends who had nothing lined up when their FY2 job finished subsequently secured something and moved out by November. And my inbox is flooded with job offers from all the agencies I signed up to almost every day at the moment.

Where to start?!
As we saw last week, it’s going to be competitive. So decide where you want to go. Or you can just go for the blanket approach and apply everywhere (this is what I did)…

• Write directly to the hospitals – Google them. Find who is in charge of admissions. Send them your CV and covering letter. Tell them when you’re available from and to. Be as flexible as possible. Tell them why you want to come to their country. Have you been before? Mention it. Have you worked at that hospital before (e.g. on elective) – then play up to it. Read up about the region / town / hospital. Say why you want to move to that region. Read up about the hospital / any job offers they have on their website. Say why you want to do that placement.
• I couldn’t find any kind of list of hospital details for Australia, but for New Zealand, there is this incredible website that lists all the regions and their application details. Its healthcareers.org.nz . Go to ‘I’m an RMO’ and then ‘Apply Now’ and you’ll get this amazing screen with a map of New Zealand, all the districts, and all the email addresses for who is in charge of admission for that district. Many of the hospitals have an online application system for their annual applications, which opens in June. Some of them link to that from here too (more on this later).

• Know the lingo. The systems for doctor training are similar to here, as they essentially based on an old-fashioned English system, but they’re not exactly the same. In Australia there are:
  • Interns – fresh out of medical school. Same as FY1s
  • RMO (Resident Medical Officer) – called RMO2 (FY2) and RMO3 depending on what year you are. Many places don’t offer RMO3 jobs
  • Registrar – yeah that’s right. No SHO. Straight from RMO to Registrar. Sometimes that means straight from FY2 equivalent to registrar. They kind of divide registrar into junior and senior registrars, and junior reg’s may not have the same rota (e.g. alone at nights) as seniors. But they might do. When I was applying I was encouraged to apply for registrar positions by the recruitment people. Some of my friends are working in rural NZ as the ‘Medical Registrar’ or ‘ED registrar’ and they are the most senior person on site on their night shift. If (like me) you think that’s scary, you might want to hold off applying for registrar jobs. In the end I applied for RMO and registrar positions in most of the hospitals I applied to
• Use Agencies. They get paid by the hospital to find you. They take a lot of the hard work out of all the visa applications and doctory registration bits (I’ll go into this next week), and they don’t pay you any less. Make friend with your agent. Call them up often. Pester them. Let them know how keen you are. Be their friend. Make their lives a misery so that they are so desperate to find you a job to get you off their back. I signed up for a lot of agencies. Some were more useful than others. Here’s a few to get you started:

Wavelength – They got me my job! Very friendly. Helpful with all the visa and paperwork stuff. Did take a while to find out if I’d actually got the job after the interview.

Vista – Based in the USA. Really helpful and persistent staff. They would call me up every week with an update, always readily available to chat, and very honest about what options they had (mostly stuff in Perth, not good for NZ). I wasn’t really interested in Perth, but got the impression that if I was, they could have got me something pretty quick.

Challis – send out lots of very promising looking emails with their offers (often several placements a week in various locations in Australia and NZ), but I found when I replied that they weren’t particularly helpful and nothing came of anything I put my name to.

International Medical Recruitment – when I spoke to them around November 2012 they said it was too early. Call back in spring.  When I spoke to them in March 2013 they said they didn’t have much on offer. Did get a lovely phone call from a rep one day, but basically said that I would be looking at jobs starting in Feb 2014.

So, after looking at the options, you basically have got three good avenues:

1. Through an agency
2. By writing to the hospital directly (for New Zealand, details on the Health Careers Website)
3. Through New Zealand’s nation recruitment scheme which opens in June, interviews in July, and offers in August. Details on the Health Careers Website.

The New Zealand National Recruitment scheme
All the regions offer all of their SHO and Registrar jobs to start in November to any applicant who applies through the Health Careers Website. So, literally, each hospital in NZ will require SHOs and Registrars in all their specialties. That’s a lot of jobs. And on that website you can see them all and apply to them. I applied maybe to 20 different jobs at various places and specialties.

I didn’t have anything lined up in June. I was getting worried. Then I got an interview for the job I got in Australia. And I also applied to New Zealand’s national recruitment scheme. I got the job in Australia, and accepted it. Then about 2 weeks later I had 4 interview offers from my applications to New Zealand. So it all came good. But it took until July.

In summary, my top tips are:

1. Don’t panic if you can’t get your dream job in Melbourne (everyone wants Melbourne) starting on the 8^th August (who wants to locum at home before they go away?) lined up by this Christmas (planned well in advance). Get your expectations in order. A few people will get something starting in August. A few more in October / November. If you really want to go, you’ll get something that starts in or before January somewhere in Australia or New Zealand.
2. Write to everyone you can find. Be persistent. Make sure they know your name and how keen you are.
3. Tailor your applications to the place / hospital / placement you are applying to. Read up about where you are going. If you don’t want to be in the outback, then don’t apply there and then get disappointed when you arrive. Your visa is often sponsored by your hospital and isn’t easily transferrable if you don’t like it when you get there.

Well, good luck guys! I’ll probably be competing against you all again next year if I decided to stay / or go to New Zealand, so please put in a good word for me!

Any questions, use the comments!

Part of the Moving to Australia series

The post How to Get a Job In Australia or New Zealand appeared first on almostadoctor.

Ah yes. So, why do you want to move to Australia (or New Zealand) anyway?
Often accompanied by the ‘Oh so you didn’t get into CMT / A+E / [insert name of desired training track] in the UK then?’

Errr no. Actually I didn’t apply, thanks. It’s my dream to move to Australia. I’m not a half-arsed dim-wit being deported to the colonies as punishment. But if you are planning to go this route you can expect a little bit of skepticism from some of your colleagues back in the motherland. Not all of them. Just some. As you get to FY2 your future career plans become quite a hot topic, and everyone has an opinion. Colleague opinions on emigrating can generally be divided into three categories:

1. The skeptics. As above. See it as a lack of commitment. An easy option. Perhaps deeply secretly envious. Highly career driven. Have got 7 published papers and a job at a super specialist tertiary unit in London. Like to tell you about their 7 publications and a job at a super specialist tertiary unit in London.
2. The openly jealous types. The ones who have got a CMT / GP training job but aren’t quite sure if they want to do it. Would love to go to Australia but haven’t quite got the courage, or have too many commitments at home to take the plunge.
3. The maverick. The senior doctor who’s been there and done it. Highly supportive. Loves life. Has a life outside of medicine. The kind of person I’d like to be.

Back to the question in hand. Why do I want to move there anyway?
Well I expect everyone has their own reasons, but if you aren’t sold on the idea already, here are a few of mine…

1. The weather! Of course yes the bloody weather! Have you seen the weather out there? Its like sun sun sun everyday. No dark winter mornings. No months of drudgery and never seeing the sunlight. Just sun sun sun. Well, almost. Its way better than you can imagine back at home anyway. And, if like me, you like the great outdoors, it gives you way more options for your free time. Cycling to work all year round is actually a pleasurable option. You can literally go for a run on the beach before work. I have a pool at my house. Yeah. Like actually. A pool.
2. Australians. (Yes really!), Australians are relaxed. And friendly. Really friendly. It actually feels like people genuinely want to help you. If you go to a shop, the people who work there actually know what products they stock and what they do. If you go to rent a car, and it’s cheaper at the place around the corner, they’ll tell you its cheaper round the corner and send you there. If you’re an ex-pat British doctor without many friends, other staff at the hospital will fall over themselves to invite you round for dinner and take you out to show you the sights and generally make sure you feel welcome and settle in well. I imagine people in Britain used to be more like this, like in the 1940’s. Before the iPod. Before they all got so busy. Poms really do whinge a lot.
3. The job. OK, I have fairly limited experience (in Emergency). Two months elective placement in NZ two years ago, and now one month working here in Australia. But from what I can tell, so far, it’s a much better environment to work in that at home. There are a lot of perks of the job. I do 4-on 4-off. Only 10 hour shifts. Compared to a 12 day on streak on medicine on call including 12 hour day shifts like we used to get at home, this is unbelievable! The senior support is great, there are always three consultants ‘on the floor’ between 8am and 11pm in a 17 bed Emergency Department. And they are all pretty friendly and approachable. Being ill isn’t a crime. You are basically encouraged to stay at home if you aren’t feeling great. (You even have a set number of ‘sick days’ per year. Some unscrupulous doctors also kind of treat these days like extra days of annual leave!). I could go on. But I won’t rub your faces in it. It just all seems to add up to make my job a whole lot less stressful.
4. The holidays! You get lots of annual leave. And you can take it almost whenever you want. Most hospitals have a ‘relief team’ of doctors whose entire full time job is to work in various departments covering annual leave – so you can actually take your leave when you want to take it. I get 27 days basic allowance, but then I earn more for every shift I work, which will be about an extra 10 days for the year. Apparently, I might also get an extra day off for working a Sunday, so probably about another 12 days there. Factor in my 4-on 4-off rota (sorry, ‘roster’ they call it here) and that means I only work 133 days this year. Oh, and I get a $4,000 study budget and some days of study leave too (not sure how many). Have I persuaded you yet?!
5. The pay. I’m not particularly driven by money. That’s why I’m a doctor, who wants to do medicine. But, it is nice. Especially when the basic pay is about 50% more than the basic pay at home. And the ‘banding’ is done by the hour. Like 25% for after 6pm, and 50% for nights. And 100% for Sundays. Yes, the cost of living is a bit more here, but not hugely. Probably about 20%. There are also lots of tax benefits for government workers. I get a big chunk of my salary paid straight into my account tax free, and then I have these special debit cards that allow me to spend a proportion of my salary tax free on various specified items (like food, which is obviously quite handy). They also pay you every two weeks, instead of every month. I feel like a millionaire. I’ve opened a savings account and everything.
6. The healthcare system. It has its flaws. Like everywhere. Its expensive compared to the NHS. Its mostly government funded but has a bigger private sector than at home. When you admit a patient, often they have private insurance and can ‘choose’ to go to a private ward. By ‘choose’ I mean, if they are not very sick, then they are allowed to go to a private ward. If they are very sick, they can’t go there because private wards won’t take any risky patients. But working in this system is great. There are more staff. Easier access to investigations. More freely available medications (anyone with pain and nausea in A+E gets ondansetron and oxycodone, and that stuff really works!). Making referrals to other specialties is relatively less like an interrogation than at home.
7. The economy. They have never had the recession in Australia. Their economy is largely based on exporting raw materials, a lot of which goes to China. So their economy is more closely tied to China than at home. And, when other countries go into recession, Australia tends to do well, because people invest in commodities. The Australian dollar has been incredibly strong recently, around $1.50 to £1. Its now fallen back to more like $1.80. Which is bad news for me if I want to bring my large amount of amassed savings home next year. But good to get your friends to come and visit. I’m trying to stop comparing prices to home and think in dollars but I haven’t quite got there yet. But this booming economy means there is a lot more money going round in the country. Unemployment is low, the state of the economy is not a topic that is forefront in people’s minds. There is more of a culture of eating out and enjoying life with that seemingly more available disposable income.
8. I don’t want to ‘settle down’. Take a minute. Imagine life as a CMT / Med Reg in the UK. Now imagine doing the same thing in Australia. It’s really hard to imagine going back. Yes, I miss my friends. And my family (even you, Mum). But, not that much (not yet anyway). And I can always take a few weeks off and go home for a bit if I want to. But aside from emotional angst, some ‘homely’ countryside, and the BBC, almost everything I can imagine is better here. And, I hope it stays that way.

Part of the Moving to Australia series

The post So, why do you want to move to Australia anyway? appeared first on almostadoctor.

It’s a well-trodden path. For the last decade or so thousands of FY2 doctors have finished their training here in the UK and headed down under to Australia or New Zealand to take a year out, experience a different culture, travel, and even settle.

But now things are changing. It’s not quite so easy. So let me tell you about my experience of moving to Australia.

Here’s the main problem. Australians. Bloody Australians. There’s too many Australian doctors – and so the need to find doctors from overseas is declining.

Ten years ago Australia had to import thousands of overseas doctors a year to meet demand. They brought them from all over the world. So, if you were a UK graduate, speaking English as your first language, then you had a pretty big advantage. They were taking hundreds of doctors from the UK.
But, they knew this was a problem. So, they were recruiting more Australians into medical school. Lots more. In 2003, there were less than 1,500 Australian medical school graduates. In 2013, there were more than 3,500.

Taken from The effects of medical graduate expansion in Australia The Final Report March 2012

This year, like in the UK, there are more graduates than internship placements. So some Australians are missing out. So where are they going? New Zealand that’s where! Combine this with the fact that now many New Zealanders, who previously went to Australia, now stay at home, and this makes it much more difficult to get a job there too.

But it’s not impossible. More difficult, yes. But not impossible. I’ve managed it so it can’t be that difficult. You need to be persistent. And be prepared.

Pop back in a few days for the next blog post: How to get a Job in Australia or New Zealand

Part of the Moving to Australia series

The post MTAS (Moving to Australia Soon) appeared first on almostadoctor.