ValueMD Medical Schools Forum - View Single Post

azskeptic · #8 (**permalink**) 02-19-2008, 10:33 AM

the argument about someone not eligible to license in california being able to work in a federal facility there has been discussed widely here. Most Feds have community treatment centers and thus people must be licensed to work there. If you can't license in the state you won't be hired. FInd someone who you can prove is doing this in California and show us all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RoHudTuffy

The school use to have an advanced standing program for certain health professionals such as dentists, chiropractic physicians and podiatrists. They no longer offer it. UHSA use to grant them advanced standing so that they did not have to repeat certain courses such as anatomy with dissection (since a bicep is a bicep on a cadaver whether you are a chiropractic student or a medical student). For some professions such as OMS , they could get out of some clinical rotations too since they had already done ACGME approved surgical residencies.

Anyway, with this old program for example Chiropractors could complete the program in 27 months. They first did some basic sciences in pharmacology, pathology , diagnosis etc. One version of the program involved the individuals being given advanced standing going to the island for awhile to take these courses. Another version involved students getting advanced standing finding an approved preceptor in their area who would get the curriculum for the classes transmitted to them, who would then teach it and make sure the student completed the course work. I did it the second way - I found a preceptor who was a professor at a local United States medical school, they got the curriculum for diagnosis, made sure I did the reading, completed the assignments and then I would rotate with them in their clinic and in a one-on-one manner learn how to palpate a kidney etc on their patients.

Now some have tried to compare this program to the curriculum of United States medical schools, but made many errors. One website erroneously says that says UHSA students who received advanced standing could complete the program in 27 months whereas it takes a United States medical student 48 months to complete their medical school (link : Internet "Correspondence" Medical Schools ) . There are a great many errors on this website since anyone who did this advanced standing version with UHSA did not learn medicine in the "leisure comfort of their homes from a computer" as it claims. This comparison of 27 months UHSA to 48 months United States is a comparison of apples to oranges.

It is because the 27 months at UHSA are done consecutively without break. United States medical students go to school 9 months of the year and take a summers break. So 48 calendar months at a United States school is really 36 months of school. The 27 month program at UHSA was continuous , so it was the same as 3 years (three 9 month years). In reality those getting advanced standing the old way really received 3 years of training, and one year advanced standing. This old advances standing program was 3 years equivelant of training that was very heavy on clinical experience.

There are a number of UHSA graduates who were formerly podaitrists or chiropractors and did this advanced standing version and graduated from UHSA with their MD. They got their ECFMG and are now fully licensed in a number of states. They got advanced standing, did some of the hours at a distance, completed their 4500 clinical hours, completed residency, and are now fully licensed in a number of states.

There are at least 20 states in which graduates of UHSA who got advanced standing or did a part of their didactic education at a distance, can get fully licensed. Plus if a UHSA student gets licensed in any state he can work in a federal hospital (VA, prison, IHS) in any state. So if a UHSA graduate gets licensed in Georgia, they can work in a federal prison in California, or IHS or the VA.

However please don't anyone get any aspirations of getting advanced standing for chiropractic, podiatry, or dentistry at this point. The advanced standing and distance learning is over. The advanced standing was never the majority of their students. Many on this board (ValueMD) have mistakenly believed that the non-traditional students at UHSA comprised all or most of their students. This is another lie. At most there was only 20-30 non-traditional students ever enrolled at UHSA at one time, most have been students doing the traditional 4 year route.