Guest guest Posted April 22, 2007 Report Share Posted April 22, 2007 HI there, I havent been checking my group digests for awhile there. So I missed the call to re-introduce ourselves. I dont mean to tack onto Yehuda's great post, but I will give a brief intro here. I am a fairly recent graduate of , and studied through RMIT University in Melbourne and interned in Nanjing for a year. Prior to studying I had an applied Science qualification in western herbal medicine and health science. At the moment I am practicing part time with my partner, as we have two small children, so I am not in the clinic that much. We are in Victoria, in Australia, which is the first state to have a government registration board for practitioners. (The rest of Australia it is still a self governing industry, with the government and the tax office basically requiring people to be members of private national associations, which have varying levels of qualifications required.) The reason that I havent been up to date with all the digests lately is that I have spent the last year studying for the GAMSAT (which is Australia's version of the MCAT) as I would like to apply for graduate Medicine. (4 years for an MBBS, shorter than getting a Chinese Medicine qualification!) I sat the exam in March and am still waiting for the results. This is because the course I graduated from was designed to be in line with qualifications recieved from China (in fact, I think RMIT actually delivers a course in Hong Kong, as well.) So it was very western medicine / health science intensive. It has been criticized by other practitioners that we spend 5 years studying only to NOT become an MD, at the risk of not having a very strong classical background. And whilst I love , I would really like to be a primary health care practitioner, with an increased scope of practice. (I would also like to be able to live and work in a rural area and actually be able to support my family. Not to mention do my bit for the shocking state of rural western health care in this country.) I have a long term goal of practicing more Integrative medicine and being able to advocate for from a position of strength within the system, and hopefully do what I can to elevate it to the position of being a true Allied Health discipline in this country, able to work through our existing health care system. (I also have a pet project of changing some of the existing attitudes in the health care system to the so-called " need " for evidence based medicine, but one step at a time.) Fingers crossed for me! Regards, Lea Starck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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