Working Abroad

Working overseas – an update on America, Canada and Australia

Zoe Belshaw BVA Overseas Group & SVMS, Nottingham

Having been asked by several students at AVS Congress what they would need to do to work in the USA post graduation if they were from a non-AVMA accredited vet school, I promised to find out. I now regret that promise, it’s pretty complicated! If you aren’t interested in going to work in the USA or Canada, don’t try and get your head around these sections below, it’s not worth the brainache!

As a caveat to what’s written below, do check on the relevant websites for up to date information as things may change between me writing this and it getting published. For several of these you will need an official copy of your degree certificate rather than just a photocopy so be aware of this if travelling before trying to gain work; again check the relevant websites before you leave the country. Please note also that if you are not a British passport holder there are all sorts of additional requirements, especially around language skills; you may need to do an extra exam to prove linguistic competence.

Australia (www.avbc.asn.au/ ; http://www.ava.com.au/veterinarians-1)

Easy. RCVS counts for registration to practice as a vet in Australia. Each state has a separate board and you need to be registered in that state to be able to practice. It looks like you also need a state radiation licence and for New South Wales and Queensland, your own microchipping implanter number. More details on this on the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA) website above.

New Zealand (www.vetcouncil.org.nz/gainReg.php)

Your degree counts here too but you need to apply for a practising certificate, for details see http://www.vetcouncil.org.nz/documentation/Registration%20Forms/Information_letter.pdf). You must declare any convictions and any physical or mental conditions.

United States of America

This is where the fun starts and I STRONGLY advise looking at the websites to make sure you know what you are doing as it looks a) complicated and b) not cheap.  If you are working within a university, you will not need to do any of this as you are covered by the vet school’s indemnity but you cannot do anything outside the vet school without following the steps below.

1.       AVMA accredited schools

You lot (RVC, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin) have it a lot easier. I think you can skip steps a to d below and jump straight to section e, the NAVLE.

2.       Non-AVMA accredited schools (www.avma.org/education/ecfvg/default.asp)

The website above is the key to this, as is a big bank balance. To be recognised to practice in the USA outside a vet school, as far as I can tell this is the route you need to follow. It looks like this is then recognised by the majority of US states, each of which has its own registration system. In summary, to certify you need to do the following ECFVG (Education Commission for Foreign Veterinary Graduates) process stepwise (this is not a joke), which I am informed shouldn’t take more than two years.  There is an alternative route by the looks of it called PAVE and is administered by a different board (http://www.aavsb.org/PAVE/) which I haven’t looked into much but appears similarly expensive and complex. 

The steps then are:

a)      $1000 USD to register for the program, payable to AVMA, valid for 2 years submitted with your RCVS and vet school degree certificates and some other paperwork. This gets you into the system.

b)      It looks like to avoid having to sit an English language exam, you need to submit documentation of having spent 3 years in an English language speaking secondary school (it advises a letter from your secondary school), and the website states that a degree certificate from a UK university does NOT count. This step appears to be free.

c)       Basic and clinical sciences knowledge exam (BCSE). This one is cheap to enter at $80 USD but you incur an oddly priced $40.08 USD if you want to sit the exam in the UK rather than the USA.  www.avma.org/education/ecfvg/bcse_bulletin.asp  It is a 4 hour computer based 225 question MCQ exam on subjects including anatomy, pathology, preventative medicine etc. It looks like the exams roll all year and you will be allocated a window in which to sit the exam; missing your window incurs a fee. Without being eligible to register I couldn’t see how frequently these exams are available to sit but I asked and it’s apparently four times a year on average. There are 8 test centres in the UK ranging from Bournemouth as the most southerly to Leeds as to most northerly. You can re-sit as many times as you want, the fee is the same each time.

d)      Having waded through that, the final bit is a clinical skills assessment, the Clinical Proficiency Exam (CPE). This is a three day, six section practical exam for which you must (I checked) travel to the USA as it is only held at certain US vet schools. You are examined on: anaesthesia, diagnostic techniques, equine practice, food animal practice, small animal medicine, and surgery. It costs (not a typo) $5000 USD which is non-refundable even if you can’t get a visa etc. You are informed by AVMA when you are eligible to apply on having passed the above steps. You then have to pick your top 5 testing locations in the USA from a list and send back your choices. Once your application is processed you then get a letter telling you where and when you are sitting the exam. If you fail 4 or more of the six sections you have to re-sit the lot but if you fail fewer components, you can just re-sit those bits at a fee of $1000USD per section (I think plus a $250USD non-refundable reservation fee per sit).

e)      Congratulations, you’ve passed the ECFVG or have AVMA accreditation from your vet school. Now you have to sit the NAVLE (North American Veterinary Licensing Examination; www.nbvme.org/?id=78), a totally separate exam which the US and AVMA accredited UK school students have to sit too after they graduate from vet school which is your licence to practice in the USA (though see below re individual state requirements). It costs $550 USD plus the state entry fee (see below).  You can sit this one (another 360 MCQs) in test centres in the UK between November and December and during a window in April but must register to sit it through the state in which you wish to work, eg if you want to work in Wisconsin, you have to apply for the NAVLE through their state board who charge you a fee of >$100 USD for the pleasure; application dates vary state to state despite the exam being the same for all. There is a whole industry based on selling practice NAVLE questions so there are lots of fee-paying exam-practice websites.

f)       On top of this, some states have additional state specific exams which you will need to pass if you wish to work in that state at any time in your career, having passed all of the above. Information on the state boards is available at www.aavsb.org/DLR/.

g)      Your prospective employer now needs to apply on your behalf for you to be able to get a work visa (looks like the H1-B) through the USA immigration department. You can’t do this for yourself so you need to line up a job before you can start work in the USA and have an employer willing to fill in several forms on your behalf. You must have passed the NAVLE before you can be granted an immigration work visa. 

As I say, please check the websites for up to date information but that is the basics as far as I can tell.

Canada 

http://canadianveterinarians.net/index.aspx ; http://canadianveterinarians.net/Documents/Resources/Files/20_NEBwebsiteinfoE_Nov2010.pdf

Luckily for me, much of this is the same as for the USA and the PDF above provides an excellent summary. You need to get to NAVLE stage (either via AVMA accredited school or ECFVG route) and pass the NAVLE in two sits to get a Canadian Certificate of Qualification (CQ). If you take more than two tries to pass the NAVLE exam, you also need to pass the CPE (part d in the USA section above) before you get your CQ. Parts a-d of the above are called the National Examining Board (NEB) exams in the Canadian literature but they are the same exams to sit for non-AVMA accredited applicants as you would have to do if applying to work in the USA. Again there are individual regulations for each province of Canada in which you wish to work, any of which might require an additional exam after the NAVLE. If you want to be eligible to work in Canada not the USA you need to apply for the NEB (ECFVG) exams via the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, not AVMA. Again a small fee is needed to register for the program and all exam details and timescales are as above.

Please let me know if there are any inaccuracies in this for those of you who decide to go through with it. There are email addresses on all the websites, responses are quite slow but have been very helpful in the compilation of this document.

Zoe Belshaw