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Clinical Electives

11K views 28 replies 15 participants last post by  Rehan 
Ashish,

Doing an elective in a medical school can indeed increase your chances of getting into a residency in that same school provided that you make strong contacts with the faculty in your department (meaning getting letters of recommendation (LORs) from them and great evaluations) and maintain those contacts up to the point when you apply.

Usually doing a clinical elective and keeping in touch with the faculty member who you worked with does help in at least getting an interview.

The clinical elective is definitely considered US clinical experience.

As far as getting time to study for USMLE exams while doing electives, that would depend on which specialty you are in and what the hours of that service are like. I did not find much free time while I was doing my ophthalmology elective at Johns Hopkins but I suppose that is up to the hours required by your preceptor.

In regards to malpractice insurance, I would recommend that you first of all contact the Office of the Registrar of the school that you want to attend and ask them to put you in touch with any local companies that will provide malpractice for students.

You may want to try this website for more information about electives with information on malpractice insurance.

Hope this helps! :p
 
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Does having a US citizenship benefit you in getting an elective if you are a FMG? Or are the chances the same as all FMG's?
Being a US citizen can help you in two ways.

First of all, if you tell the program that you're applying to that you're a citizen, it means much less paperwork for them. They don't have to deal with their international student department for visa letters or ask for proof of how you will support yourself while in the US, etc, etc.

The second way that it helps is that you are able to go for the shorter breaks that your medical school will give you. When I was in med school, the people who had visa issues were sometimes given their visas way too late and they would miss the chance to go abroad during their summer or winter vacation. Also, a lot of times the year's schedule of classes can change in Pakistan and you end up having vacation at an unanticipated time for a few weeks. For non-US citizens, going through the process of applying for a visa and hoping that it arrives in time was usually out of the question.

So the short answer is yes it does matter, the long answer is that you will face some of the hardships as outline above if you don't have a passport. But the overall truth is that if you plan well and work towards it, the visa issue should not hold non-US citizens back from getting plenty of research and clinical experience in the US. I had plenty of people at my medical college who were not citizens and were still able to get accepted into some of the best universities in America for research and clinical electives.
 
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