MEDICAL INTERNSHIP/ELECTIVE IN THE U.K. as an international student - how to get one?

Guys, I am telling you right now, I wish I had this video six months ago. I have not seen anything like this on YouTube, this video. I haven't. Hi guys and welcome back to my channel. My name is Petty and my channel name is Nella Grace. It is a student lifestyle channel and today I'm going to be sharing with you guys how I managed to get my internship as a international medical student in the UK. And that is basically like my placement, my clinical placement, because a lot of you who are watching this are international medical students. Even though I am British, I do study abroad in Lithuania, but I have to do a placement in my final year, which is what I'm doing at the moment. So I just thought I would share with you guys because so many of you have asked me on Instagram to share this information and I know how difficult it was in order for me to get this information. So I just wanted to share it with you guys so that I can help someone out there. So if that sounds like something that you're interested in finding out more about, then please keep watching. Okay guys, so thank you so much for coming back to watch my videos. You guys know I've been gone for a little bit and I do have these like little moments of hiatuses where I just go away from YouTube, but that is because I've been moving. As you can tell, I'm in another different background because I stay moving. You guys know this already, but I've finally actually moved permanently or semi-permanently because I have moved back to England. As you can already tell by the title and like I said in the intro, I've moved back to the UK for my placement. It's a semester long placement, should be about six months, but it's just been shortened because of everything that's going on in the world at the moment. So I thought I would kind of give you a quick little life update as well to say I am no longer in Lithuania. I have now moved to England. I now live in the north of England and I'm working in the north of England in order for me to get my placement done. So that's a little life update and I'm going to give you all the tea guys, every single thing that I now know after doing the research all by myself. I didn't have any help, I had to do it all by myself, so this is something that I'm hoping will help a lot of people and will basically save you all of the hassle that I had to go through. So I will be putting in the description box download links for things that I'll be mentioning, like templates and lists and things like that I'll be mentioning, so if you just click in the description below you'll be able to find things. I've just made it comprehensive and easy for you, okay? Okay. Okay, so my internship is six months long like I've already said and I have to do I think like five rotations and in order for me to finish my final year I have to get this done and this is really important. If you want to work in the UK, it's really important to get experience in the UK and they do have opportunities for you to do that. They have things called clinical attachments, assistantships or they just call them placement. UK students call them placement because obviously they're being placed in their home country, but if you are from international usually sometimes they'll call it an internship, I mean an assistantship or a clinical attachment. So it's really good to get this because when you graduate as a UK student the first year of your practice is called F1, so that is your first year of practice and the F1 job is very specific of the things you can do, you can't do and it's good to know what that is and what that looks like and that's basically what I'm doing at the moment. I'm getting to find out like what is my job going to look like when I graduate and it's really important that I did this because if I just graduated and went straight into trying to apply for F1, I would really struggle and just straight off the bat before I even go into saying I have to literally just be honest and say I got this because of the grace of God, like literally God gave me this placement. It was a miracle to even get it because it was really hard with the whole COVID everything happening. If you're watching and you've been trying to get placement this year, you will know how hard it is because everyone just keeps cancelling. It's not because it's not done usually and the things I'm going to share with you is the process that I did go through to get the placement and it won't change but I'm just saying I know for a fact it was just because of prayers. I prayed and prayed and prayed and God opened up the doors for me to get this and I'll share my story a little bit later but it doesn't change the process, right? The process is still the same and that's what I'm going to share with you guys. So I just wanted to just give glory to God a second because I do not ever want to even take credit for this because I know it was all Him. So there's two main ways for you to get a placement in the UK. One is by contacting the consultants themselves like straight up or is going through the education centre of a university hospital or a hospital in general. Usually most hospitals, especially university hospitals, they will have an education centre, a postgrad centre which you contact in order for you to get these placements but in this in these unprecedented times that we're in sometimes or even in general actually you can just literally contact the consultants themselves and then you go through them first and then they will go to the education centre but sometimes it depends on the hospital who has more power to override the other because sometimes the consultants will say yeah and then the education centre says no or sometimes the education centre will say yes but the consultant says no but it does all ride down to the consultant. So consultant is basically the highest you can get as a doctor and they're the people that basically kind of run the ward or are in charge of most like a whole ward and they are the like on the hierarchy of doctors there at the top so they would be supervising you as a student and you are under them so obviously they need to be available, they need to be willing to do that with you and it all just depends on the consultant, the hospital and things like that. So those are the two main ways. So how do you get to finding how to do this right? So with the consultants this is something I'm going to with you guys which like I said is top tea because this one this took me ages to find right but I'm letting you guys now know just like how to do it yourself. So that is how to find the consultants because you might be like okay I don't know anyone if you unless you your dad's a doctor your mom's a doctor your aunt's a doctor you know someone then it's going to be really difficult for you to find these contacts so what you do basically is you type in a hospital or an area whatever and on the hospital website on the NHS hospital website itself the official website they usually have like an A to Z of the departments and when you click one let's say accident and emergency they will usually also have a section for staff and when you click on the staff members you can see what they are and usually you can tell that this is a consultant like they'll usually most of the time they only name the consultant they won't name like every single doctor on that ward they'll only name the consultant so you now have the consultant's name what you can do after that is either most consultants have the same email so it's usually like their first name dot second name at nhs.org or .gov I can't remember which one but lucky for you I am going to compile all the email addresses that I know for a fact work because I've contacted them and I know that they work for both the consultants and also the postgrad people and I'm going to put them in a document that I'm going to put in the description below so that you don't have to go through this work if you don't want to and you will have that there for you or you can do it yourself and find this um this was not a comprehensive list by the way it's just the list of thing of emails that I know that work because sometimes you email people and then the list email doesn't work anymore and things like that so I've compiled it for you and it will be in the description below so anyway yeah so you go to the website find the consultant's name and um sometimes the email address will be there sometimes it won't so what you just do is copy and paste that name into google and usually they will have a linkedin um or they'll have it will just come up on google guys I am telling you right now I wish I had this video six months ago I am I have not seen anything like this on youtube this video I haven't because I was searching for it of how to do this so this is like gold so anyway so you just type in that name on google they might have a linkedin if they have a linkedin perfect you sign up for linkedin you can sign up for linkedin gold I think they have a free trial where it allows you to have a conversation with someone um that's how I didn't even have a linkedin until this but obviously make sure your linkedin looks good you know fill it in properly so that if the consultant does come to check your page they think okay this is a legit student so what I did do with a few consultant was I emailed I found them on linkedin messaged them told them what I needed and again I'll have a template email or a template message in the description that you can download for you to use like I said I've done the work for you because I'm the plug but yeah you can just email them tell them what you need and then they will either tell you what the next steps are or they'll say yes or no so a lot of the consultants that I did this with they usually directed me to the postgrad team now I have the email for the postgrad team and then I'll go through with them that way so I'll go through that in a second of how to use the postgrad team but that is just how to get the consultants information and a lot of them are really nice they're really helpful and they will show you what to do next by the way guys can I just say if you're wondering why I have plasters on my arms is because at work today I had to get like jabs and bloods done because you know new new employee stuff hospital work anyway just in case you're wondering so postgrad team so like I said the consultants will sometimes lead you onto the postgrad team but another thing that you can do is when you go again onto the NHS websites off the hospitals if you click on the careers they will usually have like careers like jobs that are available and they'll have education sometimes it'll say like education or postgrad it'll usually be there if you search around the website usually on careers and it'll have the postgrad team on there and then you can just email them tell them again who you are where you're from what you need how long you need it for why you need it all of this stuff and again they're usually very nice a lot of university hospitals already have a system and in place for people like you and I that are coming from abroad and also for medical students and they're like King's I know have it I know Imperial has it and a few other really big universities they already have this kind of system for us to do it's just hard to find them sometimes sometimes you can also go through the university websites but I find that a bit harder it's easier to go through the university hospital website so that's how you can find the postgrad emails in order for you to do that so the actual system how does it work because there's things that hit me that I wasn't prepared for like the costs of these things because some places do charge you and again a miracle happened on mine which I'll share with you in the next section but yeah I didn't even know that there's charges that come with these things so this is the next part that we're going to be talking about in the next section okay guys so like I said most university hospitals or most universities will have this kind of system already in place for placement or for clinical internships or attachments or whatever they call them but what I didn't know before I started is a lot of them charge on a weekly basis now my internship is 20 so the minimum I found was 50 pounds per week so that was going to cost me about over a thousand pounds I think it was going to cost me like I don't know how much 50 times 20 I don't know how much that is um I think a thousand but it was going to cost me a lot of money considering I had not planned for it before so that was the cheapest some of them are costing a hundred pounds because a lot of the um and they call them elective so make sure that you are clear that's a quick point make sure that you're clear when you're emailing them and again email template below but when you're emailing them that you don't say elective because it's not an elective it's an internship it's a clinical attachment because electives are usually shorter they're usually like two weeks you know in the amazon doing something so a lot of the times it's electives that are costing them that much but internships shouldn't really cost you money and also with electives it's a limited amount of time so you could only do an elective for about three weeks I think six weeks was the most it was the longest that I saw in a any of the hospitals so it's not an elective that you're looking for and a lot of the postgrad team sometimes will come back to you and be like okay an elective is only this long don't just make sure that they know that it's not an elective that you're looking for so the cost yes some places will cost you per week so you have to be careful that you know about that and what they're costing and the postgrad team will let you know about that as well um I was lucky enough that when I actually emailed my I'll tell you like my my story so I was looking for this um placement for a very long time I couldn't find any and then my boss and also mentor of the job that I do when I'm in England is a doctor and I was just talking to her I was telling her I was struggling to find a placement she was like oh I know some consultants I'll give you an email list she gave me the email list of the consultants and then I started liaising with them they were really on board straight from the bat they then sent me to the postgrad team the postgrad team told me everything that I needed to do they were really nice really simple they told me that I was supposed to it was going to cost me 50 pounds a week but since that email they have never asked me for money and I've already said I'm two weeks into my internship so that was God only God because I don't know like I'm supposed to be paying and they have not asked me for the money so I'm just like okay that's fine I'm not going to remind you it's all good so just pray and God will come through for you so yeah costs that's something you need to know also cost of living all these things is something that you should consider because people will not pay for you to because they're doing you a favor you're not doing them a favor so those are the three main things that I would say you should really consider and things that I think you need to know if you're trying to find an internship abroad so I'm not going to really go into all of the paperwork and all that stuff guys it's a given you're going to need to do paperwork your university is going to need to like confirm that you're a student blah blah that's the boring stuff it will come together so what is actually like what does a clinical internship entail I'm going to be vlogging my experience guys like if you want me to do it on a weekly basis like what you want me to touch on I would do that I just don't know what you would like or you'd be interested in but so far you are basically when you tell them that you're a fifth year student um if you hopefully have a nice team that you're going on to they will um be really nice to you so they've basically been teaching me what an f1 does so there's an f1 on my ward he's really nice he's really helpful and I just shadow him throughout his whole day so I do I go with him he teaches me things he's really good with teaching so you will teach me things you ask me questions sometimes I'll go around with the other juniors but it's not really that often or sometimes I'll go around with the consultant but I've now learned so much in like two weeks that I had not learned in five years of my medical school just because we did not have the practical side of things I will do a separate video all about that I think but because this is just about how to get the internship so if you guys are interested then thumbs up this video and comment down below and let me know if you don't do that I'm not going to do the video really and truly because you know I'm not going to waste my time doing things that people don't want to watch um so yeah that is basically most of the things that I would say that are so really important about this about getting your internship abroad and how to do it um if you have any questions at all comment them down below I'll either do a Q&A or I'll probably do it on Instagram as well like I've been doing this a lot of these things on Instagram just because it's a quicker way of making content so make sure you follow me on Instagram because if you don't you might miss that out on that so um yeah okay guys that is it that is everything oh I kind of stressed a bit too much I literally have a hematoma like I don't know if you can see it but it's like it's it's wild um anyway thank you so much for watching guys I really hope you enjoyed this video I hope it was helpful if it was then share it with someone thumbs it up and yeah I can't wait to make more content with you guys if you've watched it to this end and you're not subscribed to my channel which according to my stats 76% of you are not subscribed which is really sad because you're missing out on a lot of really good videos like this one if you really enjoyed it then please subscribe below that's it you can watch my previous video here and the video that I think you would really enjoy you can watch it here thank you for watching and I'll see you on my next video bye