Hi Guys
Could someone please provide me with some information on what happens after internship year, as I'm a bit confused. Do we stay at the same hospital we were at for internship, or could we go to any other hospital? Also, after intern year, what are we called? Resident, registrar, junior doctor, could someone please explain what these all mean.
Thanks!
You'll learn this as you progress through medical school and get exposed to the hospital system, but:
re: what happens after internship year:
Some states give you 2 year contracts by default (NSW, mostly, provided you're not an international graduate on a CMI) whereas most other states will offer you a 1 year contract (pretty much every other state). This means that if you are interning in NSW, you'll automatically become an RMO at the same hospital network (not necessarily the same
hospital but at least within the same network) after you finish your 1 year of internship provided you pass all the hurdles (unless you choose to terminate the contract voluntarily, for example if you had another PGY2 job lined up in another state). In all other states, you'll be applying for positions during your intern year for PGY2, and these are usually given out based on merit (CV/interview/references etc).
After intern year, your job title is dependent on what job you are doing. If you continue your work as a junior medical officer (i.e. doing more terms like you were as an intern), you'll be a resident (RMO). If you were to get onto a registrar position (either accredited or unaccredited by the relevant College) then you'd be accepting the responsibility of a registrar, supervising interns and RMOs who work under you. In many states in particularly undersubscribed specialties it's possible to get a registrar position in PGY2, but for most states PGY3 is where you would usually be applying for registrar positions. There are other positions in PGY3 ("SRMO" - senior residents) which are technically more senior than an RMO job.
The term Junior Doctor tends to refer to those in intern/resident positions but it technically can be used for any doctor who hasn't finished their fellowship (although very rarely would you refer to an advanced trainee in any specialty as a "junior doctor").
In terms of registrar and onwards:
A registrar is someone who is doing a job in an accredited or unaccredited training position in a particular specialty, and who is (still) supervised themselves by a consultant (someone who has completed their specialty training). There are several stages of being a registrar; in terms of ascending seniority there are:
unaccredited (the years of training doing this do not technically count towards the specialty but it increases your experience in the area and your competitiveness for applying for accredited positions)
provisional trainee (these years count for training toward the specialty)
advanced trainee (once you have finished your provisional training)
fellow (finished/very close to finishing your years of training with the specialty but still junior to a fully fledged consultant)
There are also levels of seniority within consultancy as well as various other career pathways in medicine which do not involve registrarship (for example, a CMO position where you never really get a fellowship but do that job for the remainder of your medical career).