electives in USA

[dr_no3man]

Assalam alikom wa rahmato Allah,,,
besmellah wa kafa wa salatan wa salaman ala ebadehe allathena estafa,,, then,
In this topic I'm going to talk about the way I took till I did a good hands on clinical experience in one of the US universities,
This topic will be divided into steps that I did (I believe if you are thinking about doing it  you should do the same) till I've been accepted then the visa experience then during the rotations some good tips to show some good attitude and finally have a good letters of recommendation. Alright?
First let me tell you who am I??!! I'm NOW a fresh graduate from Mansoura University Egypt. I think that is good to go on in my topic

In this first post I will talk about my very first part  of the first step you should do which is search. google google google this was what I first did.

I stayed days and days reading on the internet about the importance of doing clinical rotations in USA if you are thinking about doing residency there and what are the good choices for that.

A friend to me was just coming back from USA when I started thinking about doing it. He did few rotations at UTMB which he told that it is no longer accepting med students from our school as it is only accepting from schools those have an affiliation with them. My school doesn't have such thing. But there are a couple of schools in Egypt that have affiliation. I asked my friend about useful websites I can use. He gave me this one You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login and this website was the first really active step in my way to USA. But this website wasn't easy at first to go through what I wanted. So I stopped using it as the only thing I could find at the beginning was a list of all med schools in the US and this wasn't my goal in it. So I went back to google google google then finally decided to give another shot in that website, and finally I found what I looked for. In that website there is a section that tells you about all the US schools offering electives and if they are accepting international students or not and also how much do you need to pay in application as well as tuition. The link of that section is as follow You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login
From this link I made my list of the US medical colleges that accept IMstudents and what are the requirements for each. I divided US med schools to the following categories:
1) Schools asking for USMLE step 1 eg. case western
2) Schools asking for USMLE step 2 eg Mayo med. School.
3) Schools asking for TOEFL
4) Schools asking for crazy amount of money with no other requirement "significant"
5) Schools asking for decent amount of money and no steps req.

During my first work on this list the only category I was thinking about emailing and going to do my rotations in, was the last category number 5. I said I want something that is not gonna cost me much as I'm only applying and don't know if I will get accepted or not  and if accepted I don't know if I will get the visa or not. It was a good choice for a beginner who is weighing it by money. But later on I found better idea that was behind going to the school I did my rotations in.

Sorry I can't continue right now as I'm sleepy but I promise to go over it later on, by the way please let me know if someone else already wrote about that so I can sum up my writings in what I can add only. Anyway I hope it will be helpful for each muslim brother or someone else. But my hope is to use this information as a way to be a better doctor and help humanity with what you learned not for only go to what they call dreams land



To be continue

[dr_no3man]

Now we come to the second part, it is really interesting to find 106 views and no one thought about replying by anything, but no problem I will keep going.

After finishing my first list which was only depending on that link I posted up there.I found that I have a valuable thing but still there is some information I need to add so I decided to go through school's websites and add more information. Now after all of that I could say that I can now decide the school I want. Here you can ask what was added to the previous list?? That's a good question, basicly I put in mind the duration the school is offering as I prefer the longer experience. Also the specialties that I can choose from. Ofcourse I didn't write all specialties they are offering but just if they are open to different specialties or restricting some of them.
After that point in my trip to reach the other side of the atlantic, I started mailing the schools I felt they are interesting for me. You should be patient while mailing schools as sometimes they take time to reply. Actually I decided to open more choices for me as I wasn't very successful with the first try. So I thought about opening category no.3 which is schools asking for TOEFL. It added few schools but between these schools I found the best for me University of Louisville School of Medicine. This school is accepting till 6 months of clinical rotations in addition to that it is open for all specialties you can apply for. Also they are not asking for any money for application it is all free. They are only asking for the following:
1) final year in med school
2) TOEFL test>100
3) Complete applications signed and sealed by your school dean or vice dean.
4) Proof for malpractice insurance
5) proof for medical insurance
6) letter of good standing in your school
7) Having certain vaccinations

From here I started my way in preparing for TOEFL to applying to acceptance to visa ,,,,,



TO be continue
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[abdel7ai]

thank you for these valuable information .....
i have finished my ortho rotation one year ago . my intention is to have a fellowship ..
i do have questions , i wonder if u r available to answar them
thanks again .

[kareim]

hey...thx alot for sharing ur experience...and am looking forward to read rest so plz share it fast
was asking about the proof  of malpractice and insurance and how did u fulfil it all..so i gues they are in rest of the future info...looking forward to it...

all the best

[dr_no3man]

@Abdel7ai: Sure brother, I'm here to offer help. I hope I'd be able to answer your questions.
@ Karem: That's a good question about malpractice insurance. I bought mine through a company called academic insurance. I made it by emailing ms.Janet Williams at this email janet@academicins.com.  Later on everyone I gave that email told me that he is not receiving any response back, so I went to their website and found that they made an online application online section for that issue and this is the link You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login I didn't check if this application system is working or not but I think it worth giving a try if you are interested. But take this advise dude try to make that paper at the end as it will cost you money so I advise you to try to make it after being accepted in your rotations and better even after having your visa in hand. BTW I'm not advertising for anyone I'm just trying to help

Do you know guys? lack of replies to what I was doing was really bringing me down, but thanks for replies and inshaallah I'll continue whenever I've time.

Salam.

[Omar Khudruj]

thnx dr.no3man & jazakallah khayran

[3AMR]

THX FOR SHARING UR EXPERIENCE AND I'M WAITING FOR THE REST ON TENTERHOOKS.

[dr_no3man]

Jazakom allah 5eer brothers for comments, and by the begining of the weekend I can go on again.
e7na wasalna feen ba2a??
Oh yeah, to the preparation for the TOEFL test. really guys I prefer if you ask about what you want to know if you are interested in doing the same rather than doing it as a one man show and maybe getting into details that you don't need. Please, flood me with questions and trust alhamdulellah I've a good experience in this regard as I made myself and also helped other 4-5 friends to do the same thing. I hope you understand what I mean.
Now, as I've some time I can give some advices for those who want to take the TOEFL test. First of all TOEFL is not a test that asks you study certain materials in order to pass or make a high score. TOEFL test they tried to make it a tool of testing your english in general. So if you want to prepare yourself for TOEFL you have to improve your language before going through what they call TOEFL "preparation" books. If you want to ask me so how good is my level in english to be able to go for it, I believe that on a scale from 1-5 while 5 is native speaker, if your language is 3-3.5 is enough to make a good score in it. The is some good books for the TOEFL. The most important one I believe is "the Official giude for the new TOEFL" this book is made by the organization that put the test and they tell you how they score and evaluate and how they want the answers to look like. So it's a good start but again after improving your language. Afterwords, the is barron's and cambridge also kaplan made a book for that.
However, these books are not going to teach you how to speak english so for me what I made at that time is that I went to skype chat rooms for speaking english and started practicing speaking english only with people who are not arabic speaker so english became my only way to express what I wanna say. As for me at that time maybe I wasn't forced to speak english only before that except few times in my life. So it is important.
Also listening to english is very important as there is a listening section. I don't advise to listen to music or watch movies as I believe it is haram and we are in this path in need for every help from Allah to keep going in our way.
That's enough I think about TOEFL, so maybe tomorrow we can go to the next step.
Fe aman Allah.

btw feel free to ask any question.

Salam.

[3AMR]

FOR HOW LONG DID U PREPARE FOR THE TOEFL?

[dr_no3man]

well, again this question reflects that you didn't get what I was trying to say. Brother 3amr it depends on your language. Alhamdulellah my english was not bad as I took my education in the UAE, but as I was doing it during my sixth year and time wasn't that enough to do something extra it took like one month if I separated the studying time for it only. But again maybe your english is much higher than mine, so lesser time will be needed.

[abdel7ai]

thanks dear dr. no3man ..
as i told u , i have finished orthopedics one year ago, i want to do fellowship in usa..
it is hard as i know to get a post ..... my question is about the visa .
the opportunity to get <research > is easier than fellowship, as i know < from the net>; if i have a research post, that visa J1 will be for research, and i can not make it for a fellowship.
on the other hand , after 2 years , i must go out of usa for 2 years.
so if what i wrote is true , this means that i can not continue with a fellowship.
whaat i said is true or not?
i have other questions , i want to ask them by time....... thanks for help..

[Mazen Hasan]

I want to comment here
I did switch from J1 research to J1 clinical few years ago in 2004. I don't know if they change the rules since then.
I think the best start is to look for an observership here for 2-3 months and then you can build a good connection for research post.
Best wishes

[dr_no3man]

@Mazen: Thanks for helping me answering this question, I agree with what you've said and want to add some.

@abdel7ai: Honestly brother your question is not easy to answer straight forward, but I can add to what dr.Mazen said, I can say still some people switch from J1 research to J1 physician  with no problem but some other people got stucked and lost their residency spot because of the 2 years home residency. For me right now I'm on J1 doing research but it is not a research category it's a student non degree as I came on this visa to do the rotations I'm talking about then got engaged in research through extending my visa by a new DS-2019. Anyway, dr.Mazen gave a good idea coming to do some observership make contacts switch easily to research, but the point that comes is up is: Is it easy to have a visitor visa? This question is yours. By the way, if you are ECFMG certified at University of Louisville there is a Psychiatrist accepting IMGs to do observership with him, a way to help them get to residency. You can use it as a way to come then contact Orthopedics guys and see who is working in research then hook up wth him/her. I hope this helped. I will post the link about that psychiatrist if you are interested.

[dr_no3man]

Well, I'm back to add some more
As I said before doing hands on clinical rotations in the US is a plus in your CV, but sure you have to work on what I call it the "basics" which is USMLE scores. You knoow right now the double 99 is not rare, many people esp. IMGs even make scores like that. As you know AMGs don't need a very high scores to be accepted in residency.
Anyhow, what I want to add now is some advices about while you are applying for electives.
1- Apply at least by 6 months in advance.
2- Choose rotations that can help you in residency later on but most importantly not competitive between american students so for example when I applied I wrote my best rotation first then the second and thirs choices are rotations that are not common liked by students. Sorry for that but you won't be happy when your application you worked on for months be refused. So if you want cardiology rotation, you should know that it is really wanted by student so you can put it as first choice then choose something like hematology, pulmonology which you will have better chance to be accepted in it if not accepted in cardiology.
3- This one should be the first, believe that anything good happens to you is from Allah so alway have a good relationship with your god sure doing your prayhers are basics you can add supplications and rememberance of Allah whenever you have time.
4- What they said it is required so it is required and prepare it in the best way that they should accept, for example a letter of good standing by your dean, why not you make it in the form of letter of recommendation so it would be much more positive in you application. BTW, actually from my understanding of personalities of people when you ask some for letter of recommendation is much better than a good standing letter as by asking him to recommend you, you are giving his words a value he may like to feel it.
5- if you can apply for more than one school this would be a gr8 idea as you increase your chances.
6- If you know someone from your school did something like that before go ahead and get in touch with him as certainly he can help in finishing of the paper work.

That's what I have in my mind right now.

[kareim]

thx dr.no3man..looking forward to hear rest of your journey...thx for the site of malpractise insurance and the tips..rabena yekremak we yegazek khayran isa...