Basics of Malpractice Insurance for US elective for Indian Students

Alright guys, I know there is a huge amount of online material on US electives,malpractice and health insurance and how an Indian Medical Student should go about getting one. So how is my blog different from the rest? Simply put, what I am going to tell you is my personal experience. By doing so, I hope, you will be able to actually see the road, rather than get vague directions from a passer-by! So here we go! But First things first:

1. Get approval from your dean's office:

This is the first step on the road to getting a US elective. We Indian Students usually either dont think about this part at all, or even if we do, we are confused about it. First let me tell you why is it important. If you get approval from your dean, you are able to write in your CV that the US clinical experience contributed towards getting your degree. This is important. Usually, Indian Students trying for US electives dont take dean's permission. Hence, they are marked absent for the time they are in US, besides, they cant write the US clinical experience on CV, because the home school never "officially recognised" it. Taking permission from the deans office solves the problem.

2. Plan the PLACE and ELECTIVE SUBJECT carefully

A general rule of the thumb is that its very easy to do electives at those places and in those subjects, which are known to be highly competitive for residency. So choose carefully, you dont want to be going to a place which wouldn't anyway call you for residency, nor should you do an elective in orthopaedics if its actually general surgery that you are aiming for.Regarding the places, universities in the east coast of the US are traditionally most favourable.Go to those places where your seniors have managed to secure residency, or you "know" somebody at that place. Regarding the subject ,medicine, paediatrics and psychiatry are supposed to be the easier ones to get in residency, so plan your elective accordingly, keeping in mind your personal preferences as well. Electives are usually in superspecialities, if you want to eventually superspecialize in cardiology, then you shouldn't be doing an elective in hematology-oncology; even though both belong to the speciality of medicine.

3.Search,search and search

The reason I say it three times is that we Indian Students usually search for electives in a medical university's website. (for the uninitiated,AAMC provides links to all the medical unversities' homepages). Although this is a good way of getting started, its not exhaustive. Many individual hospitals affiliated to the university run their separate elective programs, which might be actually easier to get. You can find all the hospitals affiliated to the university in the university's homepage. Go to each one of them and explore.

4.Malpractice Insurance.

Now comes the tricky part. Indian insurance companies usually dont provide malpractice insurance. This means you need to search for US based malpractice providers.There are a lot of malpractice insurance providers available online. But the premium rates are very variable. I managed to find a provider who was willing to provide a $ 1 million coverage for 1 month at a premium of $300, which is very reasonable. Anything in the range of $300-$500 for one month should be reasonable.Malpractice providers ask for details of the college and elective, which means you must have all the other things worked out in advance before you approach malpractice providers. This means you need to start searching for elective as early as possible

5.Health Insurance

Health insurance is comparatively easier to get. You need to get in touch with a representative of any Indian company like TATA AIG or ICICI Lombard. Helpline nos. on the respective websites are usually all that you need, and the rest of the process is fairly simple.

6.Visa

Once you have been accepted for the elective, you should start your online visa application process. Getting a visa nowadays should not be a big problem.

I have attempted to give you the Basics of Malpractice Insurance for US elective for Indian Students and a brief picture of what all I did to get an elective in US, without going into too much details. The reason being, too many details can confuse you. If you have any questions please mail me at everythings.relative@gmail.com and I'll be glad to get back to you.

Thanks folks