Becoming medical practitioner in Australia: Standard pathway

Australia has introduced an examination named Standard Pathway for international medical graduates and plans to get a common practitioner in Australia. The motive of inducing this examination is to make sure whether or not the doctors are well competent with the Australian doctors at the very point from which they graduate from a well-reputed medical school and carry on by completing a provisional intern year.

In the case of Australia, the medical regulatory system in Australia recognizes four of the other countries that have medical training systems that equally scale the outcome of theirs. Such countries’ names are the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada.

AMC and its role

AMC or Australian Medical Council is responsible for the verification of the authority of Australia. It is also responsible for maintaining the qualification portal of AMC that contains updates and information upon the verifications that the ECFMG processes.

The assessment process of IMGs in the Standard pathway (AMC examination) only is conducted by the AMC only. It does not play any major role in conducting the assessment in the competent authority or even the specialist pathways.

Eligibility for AMC, CAT

The following are the eligibility requirements that are necessary for the candidates to meet to appear for the examination:

In terms of general registration, the IMGs that are on the Standard pathway are obligated to complete 12 months of supervised practice where a minimum of 47 weeks should be given to full-time service
In terms of provisional registration, IMGs that have undergone a successful completion of the AMC CAT MCQ along with the AMC clinical examinations are eligible for provisional registration.
In terms of medical registration, the IMGs must pass the AMC CAT MCQ examinations to apply for the board of registration conveniently.
Medical graduates must provide proof of their English language proficiency.

Primary Source Verification

This is one of the first steps for all the images planning to seek any registration in Australia irrespective of the pathway. For this, the IMGs are obligated to submit their qualifications concerning their medical skills to the Electronic Portfolio of International Credentials of ECFMG. This is to be done so that both the verification and completion of the AMC online application can be done.

Paper pattern

Under the standard pathway, there are AMC examinations and workplace-based examinations.

MCQ questions

This is one of many assessments that are conducted through examination only. In this assessment, there are AMC computer aptitude tests, multiple-choice questions, along with clinical decision-making. This examination has 150 A-type MCQs that are to be attempted by the candidates.

The motive of the MCQ questions is to analyze both the practice and principles of medicine in the discipline of pediatrics, surgery, gynecology, internal medicine and more.

Clinical decision making

In Clinical decision-making, the clinical knowledge and skills of the candidates that they possess in the field of surgery, medicine, gynecology, pediatrics, and more are tested. There are around 16 assessed stations and red stations that come in this examination. In this, the candidate has to rotate through numerous stations and then undertake selective clinical tasks.