I don't think any reasonable person should dispute the ability of any IUHS student who have used the online portion for basic sciences to get into residency. What seems to be confused here, as well as in the St. Chris forum is a bigger issue, LICENSING.

I do know for a fact, as well as Carmen knows, that there is one student who has almost completed residency and the same state where she is doing residency WILL NOT allow her to get a license. The same thing, most probably will happen with many other medical boards. I am not saying this person won't get a license, but I can say that doing residency DOES NOT GUARANTEE a license.

For more information, you can take a look at the explanation I left recently in the St. Christopher forum about week ago. To make it easier, below is the same explanation.

Max

Residency, less strict than licensing, requires a training license in most states, or training permit, or whatever the state wants to call it. Normally an ECFMG certificate and good reference letters can get you into one, depending on how competitive it is. You go through the hospital's program director and hiring committee and are granted a contract, renewable every year and you are disposable at any time if you are incompetent, a trouble maker, a bad team player or the hospital runs out of funds. Little state intervention at this point, unless you are a big screw-up, then you will have the State up to it's eye balls in your case. The hospital must ensure you are competent to the state. Otherwise, guy's that walk in suits and ties and have a J.D. will have a feast and the hospital will loose its funds, accreditation and probably will end up being an apartment complex. I know some states that let you do residency in it but won't license you.

Licensing, requires all of the above plus completion of a training period that varies from 2-5 years depending on specialty. States have the last say. You may have done residency at Mayo clinic, and if the State you are applying deems the school you graduated from no-good, you are done for in that state. Also you better have a clean criminal record, nothing pending, in some states, not even civil cases. Different states have different rules, we know about California, Texas, Oregon, Indiana, etc. More technicalities than this, I tried to keep it as simple as possible.

Accreditation, a government body recognizes the degrees of an institution as totally valid and equal to those offered in such jurisdiction. An accrediting body, like the Middle States of Colleges and Universities, for example, pays a visit to the school, evaluates it in and out (everything, facilities, finances, professorship qualifications, etc. you name it they do it) and renders a decision to accredit it, meaning it has a high standard or and acceptable standard of education. Meets or exceeds, deficiencies, they can conditionally accredit your school until improvements are done, or simply say, no. But they will tell you why you failed to get accredited. LCME schools. California does this (site visits)to all so called pseudo-American offshore medical schools, (Ross, AUC, St. Georges, and almost everyone in the Caribbean). To State (or Government)sponsored schools, they normally go through diplomatic protocol and most of the times, accept the degree since it is assumed the foreing government has certain quality control processes in place to ensure the quality of education. In other words, it is not a cash cow. Texas is doing the same thing, I need to verify this.

Recognition, meaning that a jurisdiction knows about your school through another governmental body or an evaluation agency such as IMED-FAIMER, ECFMG, WHO. Almost any school can get this, as long as the school has a valid charter (pay its dues) there is no quality control, or very little if any, or it is not guaranteed. Reason why you have so many private medical schools in the Caribbean and other places around the Globe.