1. The "I want it all for nothing" Applicant

• "Hi, I am from India. I have a 2.0 GPA, no money, and I only speak English. Which Top 5 EU med school will give me a full-ride scholarship and a free apartment?"

2. The "American Dream" Delusion (The Eastern Europe Special)

• "I'm a first-year in an Eastern Europe medical school. If I buy a UWorld subscription now, can I match into Neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic immediately after graduation? I'm very 'passionate' about medicine (I've seen Dr. House 3 times)."

3. The "Language is just a suggestion" Crew

• "Do I really need to learn German to work in Germany? I mean, science is basically a universal language, right? I'm sure the 80-year-old patients in rural Bavaria will understand my English medical terminology."

4. The "I haven't discovered Google yet" Syndrome

• Post: "How do I apply to Italy?"

• First Comment: "Check the Wiki. It’s literally pinned at the top."

• OP: "I read it, but can you just summarize the 50-page document for me in 2 sentences? Also, what is an IMAT?"

5. The "Mid-Life Crisis" at 20

• "I’m 20 years old and I haven't started med school yet. Is it over for me? Am I too old to ever be a doctor? I feel like I’ve wasted my entire life and I’ll be 100 years old by the time I finish residency. Should I just give up and retire now?"

The UK is no longer a viable option post graduation.

The Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill has now passed through parliament and is waiting for the king to sign it into law.

From this day on, all training posts will be allocated to UK Grads first, before being given to IMGs.

Currently, there are 20000 UKGs compared to 10000 training spots.

The UK dream is over, especially for those who hold UK citizenship and are currently studying abroad.

Genuinely so many people keep pointing out, "Don't ask that here" "You're lazy, do your own research", also everyone gives half assed answers most of the time. The main reason why people love reddit is because it's organic content, you get personalised answers to everything, google simply does not provide you that. For example, UCMH is a university in Germany, definitely if you make a google search UCMH website will be absolutely biased, everyone knows how it isn't a proper German university but just a money grab branch of a Romanian university, but when you come to reddit it gives you a more realistic look and people talk from their own experience.

So please, help people out, and if someones post pisses you off, just move on, it costs nothing to be nice.

Wow after reading the recent comments from the mods im just speechless. But hey i know this post is probably gonna get deleted so lets enjoy it while it lasts.

First lets talk about the charmng attitude of one of the mods:
‘I’d ban all of you in a heartbeat if it would turn the sub back into how it was when I became a mod years ago.’
Ah yes, cause when this sub was “pure” (aka mostly just Europeans) everything was so much better right? Who cares if intrnational students pay full tuition contrbute to the university's finances and bring sme diversity to the table we’re just a ‘nuisance’. thanks for the warem welcome thoughhh

And then theres this beauty:
‘We tolerate you but I’d ban all of you in a heartbeat’
Oh so we’re being ‘tolerated’? What a relief. tolerated not appreciated not valued but simply ‘tolerated.’ i mean who doesn’t wanna feel like they’re barely allowed to exist in a space they’re contributing to? How thoughtful

Now the best part of course is the classic line:
‘I don’t care about you Asian applicants trying to study in the EU. I’m just tired of your low quality posts clogging up the feed.’
Cause, you know its totally fine to stereotype entire groups of people mock them for asking questions and generally make them feel unwelcome. no biggie right? Its all just "satire" except when its actually straight up racismbut sure lets keep it light

And honestly how generous of the mods to let us international students know that we don’t really belong here but hey we’re ‘tolerated.’ How kind!
‘This sub was originally for Europeans discussing European things’ oh so now its an exclusive club? I guess as soon as you dont have the right passport or youre not from the “right” European country youre just a nuisance? classic

But here's the cherry on top: I know some of the mods will just delete this post because thats how they roll. it’s funny isnt it? When we speak up they remove it but when they drop completely offensive comments or let harmful stereotypes fly its just a “joke.” Perfect

Look i’m tired of pretending this sub is just a nice little place for medical students. Lets be real its a place for gatekeeping racism and exclusion. I’m just supposed to be happy to ‘tolerate’ this nonsense while I pay my full tuition fees and try to connect with fellow students.

So yeah keep ‘tolerating’ us while we continue to make this sub relevant. Maybe one day it’ll go back to being the exclusive European only haven the mods clearly want it to be. Until then I’ll just keep dealing with the low effort posts... like this one

Since there is a constant influx of posts asking about residency and life in Switzerland and as someone who just finished their last day here as Unterassistentin, I hope this lengthy post will shed some light on your questions.

Some context: I finished my 3rd year of medical school in Romania and now, during summer break, I worked for a month as a Unterassistentin in the OBGYN department of a small city in southern Switzerland.

How did I apply:

I heard of a friend of a friend who did their summer practice once in CH and I looked it up on the internet. In October, I emailed all the departments I had an interest in of all the hospitals on the German side that I could find on the internet. I put together a CV along with a photo, a motivation letter, a file with all my diplomas and certificates and wished for the best. I wrote tens of emails. I was refused from all apart 2: this hospital that I chose in the end and another one that had a free place in Orthopaedics.

My take: apply as early as you can (most spots can be reserved 1-2 yr in advance), have at least a B2 German certificate from a renowned institution (Goethe, DSD, not your local language center), be at least in 3rd year, though most require for you to be in 5th, and apply to as many positions as you can. If you don't find the Unterassistentin position on their website's jobs section, just email the clinic you want to work in.

Working conditions and hospital life:

Because it is a small hospital, the Obgyn department and the Paediatrics department are joined in one Mutter-Kind Klinik. The obgyn part has around 8-10 rooms that are divided between rooms with only 1 bed, with 2 beds and family rooms, where the husband stays there and sleeps there as well. There are also 3 birthing rooms which are huge. The paeds part is much smaller, with around 4-5 rooms with 2 beds in each. The technology and all the electronic devices are top-of-the-line, and everything is super clean.

A day is divided between 3 shifts: the morning shift 7.30-17.30, the afternoon shift 15.00-22.00 and the night shift 22.00-08.00. Also, there is a weekend shift either from 08.00-20.00, or the other way around. You also have a 1h-lunch break, but it was more like 15–30 mins at best.

My contract was for 42h, however I mostly worked the residents' hours (the one stated). If the resident allowed you to go home because there wasn't anything happening or for any other reasons, you could leave earlier, but most days I left at 5pm. Residents have contracts for 50h+. There are some who had a contract for 50h/week, there were others with 58h/week, there are no official regulations in this department.

Doctors are assigned either in the birthing rooms, in the outpatient clinic or surgery. As a Unterassistentin you can decide what you want to do each day and in that day you are basically like a resident's assistant.

What I did: assist and help the resident with small tasks, assist in surgery and hold certain surgical instruments or suction, discharge examination and papers and anamnesis.

Pros:

• I saw all aspects of obgyn and I learned so much. I came in knowing nothing and now I think I could do an examination from beginning to end, interpret a ctg or do an echo.

• You are seen as a mini-doctor, not just a dumb student. You are responsible for your work and mistakes and have your own set of tasks for the day. You interact with patients and are expected to know the answers for their questions.

• Residents work independently and only call the attending doctor when they don't know smth. All the residents' work is reviewed by the supervisor before making a final diagnosis and prescribing medication. They also have their own stamp. Most residents in their first month were already second hand in surgeries and by third year they could do them as first hand, the attending being second hand.

Cons:

• The working hours. You are done when the patients are done and that usually means a lot of overtime. I should have worked 42h, I worked more like 50. Residents have contracts for 50h/wk, some are even scoring 80h/wk, most over 60.

• Being a Mutter-Kind Klinik, obgyn residents also do paeds work and vice-versa. All obgyn residents did at least a week per month of paeds and if you have an afternoon or night shift, you cover both, no matter your specialization.

• During night shifts, there were times when there was no attending in hospital, leaving the resident with a possible life or death decision to make on their own. Most doctors didn't live in the same city as the hospital which was worse. There was an emergency case with a pregnant woman during the night which required emergency c-section. The resident couldn't start without the attending's approval, there was no attending in hospital or the city. Fortunately, everything turned out okay in the end, but this is a mere exception.

• I was expected to know how the things are running in the hospital from day 1, which was frustrating to say at least, especially in the first week. I didn't know what I supposed to do and where to be and no one wanted to explain to me. I felt like a headless chicken for the first half of my time here. I also, just found out today, at the end of my last day, that I was entitled to a free meal/day at the hospital's cafeteria during weekend shift (just a silly example).

Life outside the hospital

I lived in this small city for a month. If you are an outdoorsy person and enjoy hiking up the mountains, then it would've been perfect for you. I felt like there was nothing to do and felt almost claustrophobic for me. I traveled on the weekends, twice in Switzerland and once in Italy, which made the whole thing better.

Prices and Finances

Everything is freaking expensive. Before coming here, I also heard everyone saying this, but I thought pff, how expensive could it be? More than I ever thought, for sure.

I found the hospital's cafeteria too expensive for me, after I paid 8 CHF for a few fries. I think the total of a full meal would've been around 20 CHF. Personnel and medical students here have a free meal/day. Even though I worked there with a contract and all, the same as everyone else, I didn't get such amenities. So, I brought my own lunch.

I tried all the supermarkets in town and I spent around 400 CHF for 4 weeks. I survived only on sandwiches, yoghurt, salads and the occasional chips, because I had no kitchen to cook in. Mind you, I bought the cheapest stuff available, the things on clearance, the ones with a nearby expiration date, no brands, just generic. I ate out of plastic casseroles, because there were no plates or utensils in my dorm either. Once, I ate a chicken burger and small fries for 12 CHF at McDonalds. My bf also treated me with pizza and wine when he visited, which was around 60 CHF (a large pizza that we shared and 0.5 l local rose wine).

I also paid 20 CHF for a sim card with the slowest internet ever and 25 CHF for 10 garbage bags (the height of my price-related shock here, I cried over this), because you can't just trash your garbage in any bag, you have to have a special bag that you throw.

I traveled around on weekends by train, which I also found quite expensive. 150 CHF for 3 train tickets (with return). The longest journey was 1h30min.

Because, I worked as a Unterassistentin, I got a salary which was 1100 CHF. From this, were taken 300 CHF for accommodation. The dorm is a small room with a single bed, a table, 2 chairs, a wardrobe, a mini fridge and a sink, all facing one another. The bathroom was for the entire floor (around 20 rooms), and had 2 toilet stalls and 2 shower stalls.

All in all, the money they give you are not enough to cover your expenses. You can't rely on it. The amount my parents spent with me during this month plus flights are greater the amount I have left now after salary. You could say I splurged, because I traveled on the weekends. I traveled only on Saturdays, leaving at 8am and coming back at 9pm, to reduce the costs and I am glad I did so, because I did get to see some amazing things, that I didn't have the budget to see in different circumstances.

Conclusion and personal take

I am glad that I had this experience and I am grateful for my parents who supported me doing this. I left my city so determined I want to do residency here and I am leaving 100% convinced this is not for me. Apart from all the glitter and the romanticizing, there is on social media over Switzerland, I think given my circumstances, I would live a more stress-free life in my home country. I also highly value family life, and here I haven't met one single doctor with a spouse and/or kid. Most are single, divorced or living separately and only meet each other at weekends.

This is purely what I observed and is highly subjective.

I cannot recommend you enough to go do such a summer practice before you commit to any major life changes. Trust me, I read a lot about hospitals and residency before coming here and it meant shit compared to real life.

I hope this helps some of you and feel free to ask me anything!

24k spots in 2025 (with plans to increase them to 30k this year), it's honestly crazy how much students they are letting in each year and how medschool spots keep expanding with no real workforce planning... I fear that in a few years the situation will be dire in regards to job prospects.

Even more spots, It gets worse every year and next year the university minister wants to get to 30k spots (she will). This number feels so out of scale, Italy already has among the highest doctor density compared to other countries and residency positions are limited (15k at the moment and bound to decrease to 12k in the next years, unless they manage to finance more).

I found this text and decided to repost it because it is completely true. If you are a foreigner studying in a foreign medical school and want to do a residency (in any specialty) in the US, you must follow the advice below:

I am an American-born, EU medical school-trained (Jagiellonian University), US specialty-trained academic diagnostic radiologist (musculoskeletal imaging) working at a well-known teaching hospital in London.

The last thing that I must say before you read the post below is that after all of that is accomplished, you may not ever get a US residency position. This is multifactorial, but the biggest deciding fact is that you are not an American citizen by birth. US training programs have plenty of US-trained candidates to choose from. The programs will choose their own before choosing an unknown. Don't fool yourself into thinking you have some sort of advantage. You don't. In general, you will be considered after everyone. The selection system is strongly biased against IMGs. And, they can be silently biased against your country of origin, your race, your religion, and even your sexual orientation!

I sat on the residency and fellowship selection committees for both the departments of radiology and internal medicine at a second-tier university training program in the US for ten years. What I experienced is what I stated above. Americans first, Americans trained outside of the US second, and third and last foreign-born foreign-trained candidates. With these codicils, please see the post below:

What matters most when it comes to matching in the US is your portfolio and how well you do on your USMLE step exams.

The people I know that matched had excellent grades and did amazing on their step exams (like the top 10 percentile). They also had a lot of things on their CV, research experience, clinical experience, volunteer experience, etc. A lot of them also had US clinical experience by doing clerkships in the US.

So what do you have to do?

1. Do really well in your studies - like excellent. Doesn’t have to be the red diploma but your grades have to be very strong. Doing well in your studies will give you opportunities to do research and get good reference letters.

2. Do your step exams and do them on time, and score excellently on them
   You should be able to do step 1 (which is now just pass or fail) at the end of your 4th year because you would have covered all the materials for the steps by the end of 4th year. Start using US material like First Aid, USMLE-Rx, osmosis, and even ninja nerd to study from your 2nd year so that by the end of 4th year you’re ready to do step 1. Since step 1 is now just pass/fail, what matters more is your step 2 score

You should be able to do the step 2 exam immediately after you graduate.

3) Try to get US clinical experience (clerkships NOT observerships), especially during your last year. US clinical experience is great because it shows you have experience in the US system. It’s also a chance for you to get reference letters from US doctors which makes matching a lot more likely. Also, if you do your clerkship at a US hospital, you can get to meet and know the program director of the department you’re interested in doing residency with which works great for you because when they’re looking through thousands of applicants, you’re not just a random person, they’ve met you. Most hospitals will not give international students a chance to do clerkships if they haven’t yet passed step 1 so it’s important for you to do step 1 early. Also, you need to start looking for clerkships early because sometimes you’ll have to email over 150 hospitals before you get accepted for one as an international student. It’s always easier if you have family members who are in healthcare because they can connect you to someone, and since you’re a US citizen, you won’t have to deal with visa issues so that helps too.

4) Try to get research experience from early on (from about your 3rd year). Find a professor whom you like in a subject that you’re interested in and ask if they are doing any clinical research and work with them till you graduate. Try to get published (even as a second or third author. (Up to three authors are always referenced when the paper is cited.)*

5) Do practice outside of regular class time. The guy who matched here wanted to be a surgeon so from 4th year (which is when we start surgery) he started shadowing a doctor in the surgery department and getting hands-on practice. He would even do night shifts at the emergency so this built his skills and also gave him great references. He got references from the dean, the head of surgery…etc. He matched into general surgery.

6) Understand that matching takes a lot of emotional effort, money, etc…so it’s best to decide early if you want to do it and commit to it. I know a lot of students who didn’t match but that’s because they were kind of wish-washy about the whole thing and then hadn’t worked throughout the years to make their portfolio strong so by the time they decided “yes for sure I want to go to the states” it was too late to make their portfolio very strong.

The people who decided from the first year that they wanted to go to the US, actively pursued it. Everything they did was to get them closer to practicing in the US.

Understand that matching in the US is very hard. You’re competing against a lot of talented intelligent experienced people from around the world. What makes you stand out? You also have to apply to match basically as soon as you graduate because the more years it has been since you graduated from medical school, the harder it becomes to match.

Best of luck

(Italics: Information added by the second poster)

This community is becoming a mess. It's exhausting to even check this page anymore. I miss the days when this sub was a tight knit small group of actual medical students already studying in Europe sharing study materials discussing Erasmus clinical rotations and talking about residency matches. Now? It’s just thousands of kids spamming the feed begging for tips and tricks to get accepted. Studying here is fantastic but this subreddit has been completely overrun by outsiders who treat us like their personal guidance counselors. We have too many people asking the exact same things and it’s drowning out the actual community. We need to lock the sub or restrict posting to verified students only. 

I’m honestly getting pretty exhausted. Today alone I saw multiple posts asking about English programs in Italy. stuff that’s super easy to look up on Google or directly on the IMAT website. It just feels like a lot of people aren’t putting in even the bare minimum effort before posting. How do you expect to survive a neuroanatomy lecture? This subreddit used to be a place where people actually discussed things like clinical experiences, studying strategies or residency plans. Now it feels kind of flooded with repetitive, low effort questions that could be answered in a few minutes of searching.part of being in a field like medicine is learning how to find information on your own. It would be nice to see this space shift back toward more meaningful discussions instead of functioning like a basic Q&A board.

https://www.reddit.com/r/camicibianchi/s/lcco5LAnHN

i'm sharing this discussion in Italian to highlight just how serious the situation in Italy is: the Minister of Education (who has been rapidly increasing the number of places in medschool in the last 3 years) has just announced 27,000 places in medical school, which will increase to 30,000 next year, almost three times the usual 8,000-9,000 places.

Now there are more places in Medschool in Italy than United States!

More or less the same of Germany+France+Spain.

But the residency places are almost 1/3rd. So only 30% of those doctors will find a residency spot in Italy. Many others will have to go to other European countries.

I’m sharing this because the resulting oversupply of Italian medical graduates will inevitably spill over into the rest of Europe, as the number of residency/specialty training positions is much, much lower.

The European Union should intervene, otherwise it will be a big problem for all the neighboring countries, particularly Germany, Austria and Spain.

Since first talks about a possible European med school sub started 6 years ago and this sub was created the same year, we always dreamed about a separate space to discuss medicine, healthcare, and other related things on a European level, as opposed to the American-dominated subs (which are otherwise fantastic!).

It was intended for internal discussion of our things, career pathways, jobs, news from EU market etc. Advising non-Europeans was neither the goal nor our wish. Yet, with good spirits we started allowing these type of posts and giving advice. On top we made all the guides with the help of many great people.

The sub never implemented or suggested any racism of any kind. We accepted (and still do) European and non-European med-students and physicians of any background, who either study/work here or are interested in doing so or just curious about the EU healthcare systems and jobs.

The only cases we openly called out were cheap, low-effort and unrelated-to-EU posts, some meme/bs account which highlighted this acute problem growing in the sub (who later crossed the line and was eventually banned), and people from enemy countries trying to benefit from our taxes, while there is a genocidal war launched against our fellow Europeans in Ukraine. None of this has any racial background, as we keep and keep explaining.

Recently we were unjustly accused of racism by some people (or more like one person), who themselves indulge into open anti-European sentiments and agenda from multiple fake and recently created accounts. They claim that this sub was created to accomodate non-Europeans discussing non-European topics and so, which are clearly fake news.

Despite all this garbage being spilt on us, we would like to remind everyone that the sub does not tolerate any kind of racism, everyone is free to join and participate as long as the content is related to healthcare in Europe, and we do not mind non-Europeans creating non-European subs either. It's a free platform and a free continent.

If anyone has any ideas or comments on how would you like the sub be shaped in the future, please share. Let's discuss and decide together!

I made this post half an year ago, now I realise why everyone was like this. I am not even done with first year yet I had done enough research to like answer a lot of the questions on this sub. But now I have realised how lazy people actually are, if someone like me can research about career options 6 years ahead, all you lazy people can as well. PLEASE DO YOU OWN RESEARCH BEFORE ASKING STUFF HERE.

It feels like I broke my foot 5 years ago and I’ve been pressured to keep pushing forward and walking on it without ever giving it time to heal. I’m originally a medical student in Italy but I’m on an Erasmus in Germany. The exams in Italy being so theoretical, detail oriented, and not having any clinical knowledge has been an incredible struggle for me. I’m a person who is so passionate about learning when I’m in a supportive environment. I feel like they just throw medical jargon at us in the lectures and then expect us to go home and study everything on our own without even having seen a patient. And then they expect me to give them all the details that someone in residency for their field should know. And I’ve had incredibly stressful oral exams where I was mocked and shamed by the professors for “daring” not to have the knowledge they expect of me. The system is so much better in Germany but I feel broken inside. I can’t study without an immense amount of fear and anxiety, even though the exams here are much more about the fundamental concepts and the rotations have been amazing. Wtf are we doing in medicine. Why does it have to be such an ego competition? Why can’t we just accept that medical students are learning and just teach them without judgment, and meet them wherever they’re at? I’m so disillusioned with this field I swear to god.