Saturday, September 20, 2014

Documents needed for electives

Since I had a big problem regarding the documents needed for electives, thought should make a quick short list for them.

Things from the college
  • Medical Transcript 
  • Clinical clerkship certificate 
  • No objection certificate
  • Primary language taught in the college for Medicine was English
  • Can try getting a conduct certificate
Things to be done by self
  • Curriculum Vitae 
  • Personal statement (at least a rough copy)
Other documents

  • LOR from the Dean or a person held in high regard (Should be a good one)
  • Background clearance- This has to be done through the police. Would take minimum of a 5 days to a month, so take that into account.
  • Malpractice insurance - IMG liability[ http://www.imgliability.com/buy/ ](cheapest and fastest) - This is the most expensive part after the money spent for your immunization tests. I have also listed towards the end of this post the other sites that you can use. (You can enter my name 'Neil Dominic Fernandes' or my email id neilnf@gmail.com in the "How you heard about us field" while getting a quote for the insurance and get an additional discount of $20.)
    P.S.- I get that as an amazon gift card with you getting the discount. Win-win situation IMHO :P
  • Medical insurance- Bajaj Allianz (cheapest). 
  • Recommend reading this post for understanding the concepts - http://electives.us/malprachealthins.html 
For the vaccination aspect
  1. Letter stating that you have been vaccinated for Hepatitis B or Hep B titers- recommend titers
  2. Letter stating that you have been vaccinated for Varicella or Varicella titers or a letter stating that you had chicken pox when you were a kid - Recommend letter stating you immunized.
  3. For Tuberculosis - Monteux test. This will be most likely positive. Recommend getting a chest X-ray showing that you are TB negative. However, if to your misfortune, it is positive you will need to start the treatment.
  4. Letter stating that you have been vaccinated for MMR or their titers
  5. Letter stating that you have been vaccinated for DT or their titers
  6. Flu shot if you going during the year end (so called flu season)
The cost for all the above vaccinations, comes to around 5k. Max. This is the information I got from my friends and seniors. Preferably get all the reports within a year prior to apply for the electives or you would have to repeat it, incurring additional costs. This is all I can remember now for the vaccination aspect. 

I would recommend checking each college's individual requirements, since the above documents are the ones I had, but note that the list is not limited to this only. Do check elective.us and umartariq which are really helpful sites. Above all, talk to your seniors and ask them for advice, since they know what problems you would face and will help you troubleshoot them, at least mine did.