Two years within which to complete internship?

Stompbox

Posted this a while back on the Health Sciences forum but I didn't quite get the answer I was looking for, so here goes.

I've heard that one has two years within completion of their medical education to conduct their internship. Hypothetically speaking, if you were to graduate from your respective college and you didn't complete your internship within two years, what would happen?

Stompbox

Anyone?

Kwekubo

You have a little over two years to commence internship following graduation. To illustrate: those applying for intern posts starting in July 2013 were required to have graduated on or after 1 April 2011 and on or before 28 June 2013. In practice, this covered anyone who graduated from Irish schools in 2011, 2012 or 2013.

his_dudeness

If you didn't complete you're internship within the two years, you wouldn't get your certificate of experience, which is required to move of the Intern division of the medical council register to the General or Supervised Trainee section, and thus you would be unemployable (as a doctor) going forward.

The rules seem to be a little too black-and-white, if such a phrase exists. For example, there are, to my knowledge, no provisions for people taking extended time off during their internship, such as for maternity leave.

Nonoperational

Mat leave is no problem during intern year.

Stompbox

his_dudeness wrote: »

If you didn't complete you're internship within the two years, you wouldn't get your certificate of experience, which is required to move of the Intern division of the medical council register to the General or Supervised Trainee section, and thus you would be unemployable (as a doctor) going forward.

The rules seem to be a little too black-and-white, if such a phrase exists. For example, there are, to my knowledge, no provisions for people taking extended time off during their internship, such as for maternity leave.

And would that completely invalidate your five/six years of medical training or what happens there?

Thanks for the replies, by the way.

his_dudeness

Nonoperational wrote: »

Mat leave is no problem during intern year.

I know taking the maternity leave is no problem in Intern year, there is plenty of legislation around the protection of maternity leave in the public sector. Less clear is whether time lost due to maternity leave is held "in credit"with respect to the two-year limit to complete internship.

By way of an example, say a woman graduates from a medical school but does not match to an intern post in her first year. She does successfully match for the second year, and takes the second half of that second year off as part of her legally-entitled maternity leave. She will have technically breached the two year limit to finish internship without completing the necessary work.

Stompbox wrote: »

And would that completely invalidate your five/six years of medical training or what happens?

Your medical degree would still be valid, you just would't have the certificate of experience necessary to apply for any doctor post within the EU. Oz and NZ also look for the cert of experience, as far as I'm aware. The US and Canada do not, so residency would still be an option.

Work in academia and teaching may still be an option, depending on the exact role. Some posts require you to be registered with the medical council (for which you would have need to have a cert of experience), others do not.