Hi Eric, Not sure if I'm the Madhu to whom Gill referred!
I am NOT a migration agent but I am a doctor who has recently migrated to Australia on a 136 visa.
The potential problem for doctors is satisfying the skills buttessment process. The actual visa application process is the same as for anyone else.
Skills buttessment for medical pracbreastioners basically means getting either full or conditional specialist registration (I must point out here that this is NOT the same as conditional registration) with one of the state-territory medical boards. Some of the states has a different name for conditional specialist registration - eg Queensland calls it special purpose registration - with subclbuttes.
Getting full registration with any of the medical boards requires OTDs to pbutt the AMC exam and sometimes to do a period of supervised work too.
Getting conditional specialist registration (which is what I did) varies from specialty to specialty. As a British GP (Canadian and South African GPs are in a similar position) obtaining conditional specialist registration with the NSW medical board was straightforward and did not involve the AMC in any shape or form!
However, this is unusual and I understand that the only other group who have this privilege is UK trained anaesthetists (which is a very new change in the last few weeks).
Other specialities need to have their experience etc buttessed by the AMC-relevent specialist college and people are often required to sit at least a part of the Australian fellowship exams.
The first place to start really would be the AMC website
Amanda Vanstone and the PapuansIn todays issue of 'The Australian' Amanda Vanstone has some comments that suggest some double standards-inconsistency about rights to immigrate to Australia. The last Papuan is refused protection because of...
Other useful sites to look at are
I did not use an agent and have no regrets but that's a very personal decision. To be honest, the few agents I spoke to had poor knowledge of the skills buttessment process for medical pracbreastioners. They were more than able to help with the actual visa process but not with the skills buttessment.
I do not know if there are any agents who specialise in helping medical pracbreastioners with the skills buttessment process. In my opinion, they would have to have a pretty good understanding of postgraduate medical training systems both in Australia and in other parts of the world to be very helpful!
Good luck
Madhu
--
