To get all the important details you need on Doctors: Specialty training in Switzerland and how to apply for it, Doctors: Specialty training in Switzerland and how to apply for it and How To Do Pg In Switzerland After Mbbs In India Please keep on reading this post from college learners. Always ensure you come back for all the latest information that you need with zero stress.

As a doctor, you get to work in a field where you can make a real difference in people’s lives. But you also need to be prepared for the challenges that come with being a doctor, and one of those is finding a residency program.

In this article we’ll cover how to do PG in Switzerland after MBBS in India. We will also discuss some of the common issues faced by students who want to do PG abroad and how to avoid them.

What Is PG?

Postgraduate education or postgraduate training is designed for those who have already completed their undergraduate studies. It’s usually required for certain professions such as medicine, law or dentistry where there are specific licensing requirements before you can practice your chosen profession.

There are many different types of postgraduate programs available; some are offered by universities while others are offered by private companies or hospitals. They vary widely depending on what kind of job or career path you’re looking at pursuing after completing your undergraduate studies but most require that you have already obtained an undergraduate degree first before applying (although there are some exceptions).

How To Do Pg In Switzerland After Mbbs In India

Study Medicine in Switzerland: 7 Things You Should Know

https://ef50bffc3eb1f92880861524d3569af4.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.htmlSwitzerland is known for its high regard for education and healthcare. Because of this, many flock to its world-renowned medical schools. Unlike other European countries, Switzerland is quite strict when it comes to admitting foreigners for medical education. But, if you meet the specifications, you get the chance to be educated in one of the best schools in the world.

If you think that you have what it takes to study in any of the country’s degree-granting faculties, then here are some things you should know about studying medicine in Switzerland.

1. What are the requirements to study medicine in Switzerland?

Admission is through the Swiss Universities website.

The requirements for medical school are similar to that of other Swiss university courses. Generally speaking, international students need to possess a degree (at least 3 years in duration) from a state-recognized university.

Language proficiency is also required – with the vernacular depending on the university At the University of Bern, for example, knowledge of German is required.

Since slots at Swiss medical schools are very limited (numerus clausus) due to the admissions restrictions of 1998, competition is strict. To narrow the field of applicants, the Universities of Geneva, Lausanne, and Neuchâtel observe a strict internal selection process. Other universities hold a qualifying examination. To take this test, you need to apply through the Swiss Universities website and pay a fee of CHF 200.

The qualifying test for aspiring physicians is administered yearly starting July. It is rendered in the German language at the Universities of Basel, Bern, Chur, Lucerne, St. Gallen, Suhr, and Zurich. It is given in French at Fribourg and Italian at Lugano.

In some cases, schools may require pre-course aptitude tests as well.

2. Which language is the language of instruction in Switzerland?

German is commonly used to study medicine in Switzerland, as is the case at the University of Bern. At the University of Fribourg, students have the option to study in either French or German.

3. Can you study in Swiss medical schools as an international student?

Yes. But according to the Higher Education Council, only a select category of foreigners can be admitted. These include:

• Liechtenstein citizens
• Foreign nationals (or their spouses/partners) with Swiss or Liechtenstein residence permit
• Foreign citizens of EU nations, Iceland, and Norway who hold a Swiss work permit
• Foreign nationals of any citizenship, whose parents are citizens of EU nations, Iceland, and Norway, and with a Swiss residence permit
• Foreign citizens who have:
  • A Swiss work permit that has been uninterrupted for 5 years
  • A Swiss or cantonal baccalaureate
  • A federal vocational baccalaureate, Liechtenstein baccalaureate, or nationally-recognized specialized baccalaureate
• Spouse or partner of:
  • A Swiss citizen
  • A foreign national with a Swiss or Liechtenstein residence permit
• Foreign nationals with parent/s who hold a Swiss residence permit or work permit that is uninterrupted for 5 years
• Foreigners with diplomatic status
• Foreign nationals categorized as refugees in Switzerland

4. What are the components of the medical curriculum in Switzerland?

Switzerland follows a 6-year medical curriculum. It is divided into 2 parts, namely a Bachelor’s degree (years 1 to 3) followed by a Master’s degree in Human Medicine (years 4 to 6).

The Bachelor’s degree in Human Medicine covers the core subjects. At the University of Fribourg, the first year delves into the subjects of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Organ Systems. The second year focuses on morphology and function, while the last year deals with understanding the mechanisms of disease. To obtain this degree, a student must complete a four-week nursing internship before the end of the course.

The Master’s degree in Human Medicine, on the other hand, teaches students the necessary scientific knowledge, skills, and abilities for clinical practice. The University of Zurich, for example, follows a core curriculum. Add to that, it includes elective modules in palliative care, pain treatment, ambulatory medicine, and family medicine, to name a few.

To complete the Master’s degree, students must undergo internship rotations and submit a thesis as well.

5. How many medical schools are in Switzerland?

Six Swiss faculties provide both the Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Human Medicine. They are the Universities of Basel, Bern, Fribourg, Lausanne, Geneva, and Zurich. The Università Della Svizzera Italiana is also expected to offer a Master’s degree this soon.

The ETH Zurich and the University of Neuchatel only offer a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Medicine.

6. How difficult is it to study medicine in Switzerland?

The difficulty of studying medicine in Switzerland starts with entering a Swiss medical school since slots for both local and foreign students are limited. If the number of applicants exceeds 20% of the slots available, the students will need to undergo a suitability test.

Even if you complete your Bachelor’s degree in Human Medicine at a certain university, there is no guarantee that you can take your Master’s there. Some schools such as ETH Zurich only offers a Bachelor’s degree, so its students can only take the Master’s program in any of its partner schools (Universities of Basel, Lugano, and Zurich). As such, you need to compete with the students who took their Bachelor’s degrees at the said schools.

As for universities that offer both courses, some guarantee direct admission to the Master’s degree. There is one exception though: the Università Della Svizzera Italiana (USI). It offers a Bachelor’s program through the University of Basel so its students are not guaranteed admission to Basel’s Master’s program.

7. What do you need to become a doctor in Switzerland?

According to the Federal Law on Medical Professions Act MedPA, those who finish the 6-year course must need to take the Swiss Federal Licensing Examination. This is a requirement for any physician who wishes to undergo further training in hospitals and doctor’s practices.

This postgraduate education is overseen by the Swiss Institute for Postgraduate & Further Education in Medicine. It takes a minimum of 3 years, where the doctor takes on the role of an assistant physician.

After the assistant physician completes postgraduate training, he/she can then take a specialist exam. After passing this test, the doctor can take in patients independently.

MEDICAL CAREER, MEDICINE

Doctors: Specialty training in Switzerland and how to apply for it

Swiss Medical Specialty Training System: How to Apply and Life as a Doctor in Switzerland.

It’s no secret that the UK no longer has the greenest pastures for doctors or those considering a career in medicine. Applications to UK medical schools keep falling year on year and more doctors drop out of medicine entirely or leave the UK during or after foundation training.

If you’re one such dispairing junior doctor then you’re not alone:

During my F2 (PGY2) year I decided to quit and apply to continue my training in German-speaking Europe. A couple of months (and a few much needed holidays) later I got a great training job in a Swiss university teaching hospital. Since then I’ve received endless questions from friends and colleages on how to do the same. Whether you’ve made a decision to go abroad or are just curious about what it’s like, I break it down for you here:

Swiss Medical System & Training pathway: Cross-recognition in the UK

After medical school, graduates can apply directly to the specialty of choice for training, which lasts on average 6 years, after which one becomes “Facharzt” or a Specialist. For most specialties the training is cross-recognized between UK and Switzerland, (you can check with the individual Royal Colleges in the UK if you want to be 100% certain it also applies to your specialty) and after attaining Facharzt in Switzerland one would be elgible for CCT in the UK and could theoretically then work directly as a consultant:

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If your chosen specialty is a surgical or medical one, it is often desireable to have a year’s experience in General Surgery or General Medicine respectively, before applying to the specialty of choice. This is particularly true for competitive and specific specialties. For instance if you aspire to become an ENT / Plastic/ or Neuro surgeon, your training pathway may look so:

Medical School -> Assistenzarzt in General Surgery (1 year) -> Assistenzarzt in ENT / Plastics / Neurosurgery (5 years) -> Facharzt in ENT / Plastics / Neurosurgery

It’s of course possible to skip the year of general surgery and go straight into your surgical specialty. Vis-a-vis skip general medicine and go straight into medical specialty. But for competitive specialties this is difficult and rare, and you’ll have to impress the Chief doctor with your CV.

However:

Most medical graduates straight out of medical school in europe DO NOT have any publications. By this I include even international poster presentations and small abstract publications. So coming from the UK, where most medical students already have a handful of publications/posters/etc by the time they graduate – it looks pretty impressive in comparison.

Duration of Specialty Training in Swizterland:

Specialty training lasts between 5-6 years for a single specialisation, of which 2 years have to be spent a category A hospital:

Hospitals are categorised into A, B, or C depending on size/caseload and academia. You can do most or all of your training at a single large teaching hospital (category A), but the maximum time that can be spent at a category B and C hospitals is 3 and 1 years respectively. This is to ensure that all trainees spend at least a portion of their training in a large teaching hospital as well as a smaller hospital. You can find a list of which hospital is which category in the SIWF-register I link to below. It also has information on how each department within a hospital is categorised.

Having said this, Switzerland is so small that you will have at least one category A, B, and C hospital within 30 min of each other, so you can very easily and realistically NEVER MOVE HOUSE THROUGHOUT YOUR ENTIRE TRAINING even if you switch hospitals. I think that’s a pretty big deal that needs to be emphasised.

Flexibility of Speciality Training in Switzerland:

Dual-Specialisation

In Swizterland it’s not uncommon to be dual-qualified in two related specialities and receive two “Facharzt” or specialist titles.  Usually the duration for dual-specialisation is full training time + 3 years. For instance if one does 5 years of internal medicine and qualifies as Facharzt in Internal Medicine, a further title of Facharzt in Gastroenterology can be obtained by only 3 more years in Gastroenterology specialty training.

For certain specialties with more niche-procedures, the list of surgical competencies can be difficult to complete (most commonly due to rarity), sometimes requiring prolongation of training time until you complete all the required competencies. I’ve heard that for very very rare procedures that you have to complete in Neurosurgery some surgeons wait a few years (at smaller hospitals) for them to come around.

Time-Flexibility

Training can be interrupted and resumed at any point, unlike in the UK. If you start at a hospital and don’t like the town or the hospital after a few months – you can quit, and there’s nothing wrong with that. (But it’s advised to apply for another position first if you don’t want a break in between, obviously.)

If you want a sabbatical or even just a few months of unpaid leave, this is certainly possible too, you just need to ask your own department chief for their approval. For instance a colleague in my ENT department now is taking 4 months unpaid leave in the summer for a very long honeymoon. Chief said okay no probs.

The reason this is possible is because in Swizterland training doesn’t happen in fixed year blocks. The year doesn’t start and end at the same time for all trainees in the country like in the UK. You can start and stop anytime anywhere, and all the time worked just accumulates in your own personal portfolio (which is free by the way) until you’ve done the required time and competencies.

You have complete control over your own training in Swizterland, Austria, and Germany. This is in my opinion the most attractive feature of specialty training in German-speaking Europe. Nobody asks questions about taking up to 6 months off between posts – that’s considered a perfectly reasonable break time. Interruption in training of more than 6 months you’d probably need to explain in interview, but that’s about it.

Entry after Foundation training (F1 & F2) or Core Training in the UK:

You can likely enter straight into the specialty of your choice as “Assistenzarzt” straight out of foundation training in the UK. You’ll have likely done enough of other specialties in your F1 and F2 rotations, and certainly after core training to satisfy departmental Chiefs that you have enough general experience.

Once you’ve entered the system here it’s advisable to complete all of your specialty training in Europe (non-UK) as the pathways within non-UK Europe are similar and largely interchangeable.

UPDATE: I’ve received a lot of emails and questions regarding entering into Swiss specialty training straight out of medical school like Swiss graduates. Just to clarify, this is not possible if you’re a UK medical school graduate: FY1 is considered an extension of the UK medical school system as it’s a form of internship, equivalent to internships incorporated into medical school in Switzerland and other countries. You must complete FY1 to be at an equivalent standing to Swiss medical school graduates. Without FY1 you’re not eligible for full registration with the GMC or MEBEKO, or any other european regulator.

Entry at SpR / registrar levels:

The FMH publishes details on each specialty and on how to get training from abroad recognized. You’ll be credited to your level and complete specialty training in the appropriately reduced time.

How each specialty is credited is different, but likely involves matching the competencies you’ve completed in the UK to the competencies required for completeion of specialty training in Switzerland and then taking the equivalent time and competencies off what is remaining.

Medical Hierarchy and Equivalent nomenclature:

Assistenzarzt/in = aka. Resident, a doctor in Training for specialty
Facharzt = Specialist
Oberarzt = Consultant like in the UK
Chefarzt = Departmental Chief doctor. He or she is 100% in charge of everything in the department. They do the hiring and firing, they set the policies, etc. Their word is final in everything.

Working as a doctor in Switzerland: The every day life of an Assistenzarzt

Hours worked per week in Switzerland can be roughly the same as in the UK, and similarly will vary by specialty and hospital. The website SIWF-Register surveys all the trainees in each hospital annually and produces excellent charts rating each Hospital department on various criteria ranging from learning experience and research opportunities to hospital Culture. It’s an excellent tool to help decide which hospitals to apply to.

Salary:

There is slight variation between individual Hospitals and different parts of the country, but each hospital has fixed salary bands for all doctors of the same level, and these are often published on their website.

Example monthly salary of doctor in 1st year of specialty training:

Basic Salary                      CHF 6,981.00
Per sat/sun on-call           CHF 47.501
Per Nightshift (midweek)  CHF 47.50
Total                                   CHF 7,076.10

According to the swiss medical regulator, the average salary of trainees (across all years of training) is CHF 8.416 per month, or CHF 100,000 annually. Towards the end of your specialty training you can expect to earn approx. CHF 10,000 per month.

On-calls and overtime are paid separately on top, and each hospital will have a different policy on how overtime is compensated. Apparently there can be quite a variation:

Some pay all overtime fairly as recorded and some don’t pay but give time in lieu. There are stories of some departments erasing overtime records to avoid giving extra payments. Presumably, however, these hospitals will be rated poorly in their SIWF surveys. At my current hospital we are given a chart every month with our scheduled working hours where we can indicate day by day any extra hours we worked or lunch breaks we missed. These are then compensated.

Application Process

Unlike in the UK where all applications are standardised and condensed into a single number by which you are ranked against your peers nationally, in the rest of Europe applications are much more old-fashioned:

Each doctor is responsible for their own application “portfolio” entirely and makes direct applications to heads of departments in their target specialty and hospital.

Your application should include:

• Cover/Motivation letter – this is the most important part of your application. Ideally written as a one-page formal letter explaining your motivations to work at that hospital/in that specialty and why they should hire you.
• CV/Resume (more on Medical CVs for Europe here)
• Copy of your medical degree/other degrees (English original is fine)

Send that to the “Chefarzt” or departmental lead of your desired workplace, and with any luck that will land you an interview.

My interview was short and conversational:

They know your background and academic achievements from your application. The interview will largely be to gague you as a person, and whether they want you on the team. Remember, in Europe doctors can stay at one hospital/team for several years.

Once you’ve secured a job, or simultaneously as you apply, you’ll want to get on the Swiss Medical Register, known as “Nostrifikation”:

The swiss medical regulator is known as the MEBEKO, and is where you apply to enter the register. The swiss medical association is called the FMH.

UPDATE: Since 01.01.2018 it’s compulsory for all doctors working in Switzerland to have full MEBEKO registration. Previously there may have been some flexibility for EU-trained doctors with equivalent registrations, but no longer.

General Requirements for medical registration:

• Medical Diploma attained within the EU/ECC
• Citizenship of an EU/ECC nation
• Proof of German ability to B2 level through either Matura (high shool diploma) from a german-speaking institution or work-experience in a german-speaking country. Those who attained their Medical Diploma in a Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, or Italy are exempt.

That’s it! Good luck!

Feel free to post questions below for anything I haven’t covered and I’ll do my best to answer them.

In this article, we have discussed the different ways to do Pg in Switzerland after MBBS in India. We hope that this article will be useful for those who are willing to pursue their medical studies abroad.

There are many factors that need to be considered before you make a decision about pursuing your postgraduate degree in India or elsewhere. You should think about your career goals, the cost of studying abroad, and how long it will take to complete your studies.

If you decide to study abroad, there are some things that you need consider before making a decision about where you want to study. When deciding on where you want to study, there are a number of factors that should be taken into account including:

• The type of course that is being offered at the school;
• What kind of facilities are available at the school;
• The location of the school; and
• Whether or not there is any financial aid available for students who wish to attend this particular school.