PTAL

I was recently speaking to an applicant who was asking about the Postgraduate Training Authorization Letter that IMGs must submit when applying to California residencies. The process is quite confusing. A few years back, my friend Dr. Daniel Louvet drafted a guest blog on my site regarding the PTAL process. Here it is:

As a native California resident and a recent IMG from Ross University School of Medicine, I have often been asked by my fellow colleagues about the process of becoming a licensed physician in the state of California. The simple answer is as follows:

(A) First, the international medical school MUST be recognized by the state of California and MUST be listed on their website 

(http://www.medbd.ca.gov/applicant/schools_recognized.html.) PRIOR to starting medical school, NO EXCEPTIONS.

(B) Second, the clinical rotations in the United States MUST fulfill these requirements:

1) A total of 70 weeks of ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) clinical rotations MUST be completed by the time of submitting the application for licensure in California.

2) Of the 70 weeks of ACGME clinical rotations, 40 weeks of the 70 weeks MUST come from CORE rotations with the minimum number of weeks for each of the respective CORE rotations are as follows:

Internal medicine - 8 weeks
General surgery - 8 weeks
Ob/Gyn - 6 weeks
Pediatrics - 6 weeks
Family medicine - 4 weeks
Psychiatry - 4 weeks

Note: While these CORE rotations only add up to a total of 36 weeks, an additional 4 weeks to complete the total of 40 weeks MUST come from any of the listed CORE rotations listed.

3) Of the 70 weeks of ACGME clinical rotations, 30 weeks of the 70 weeks MUST come from ELECTIVE rotations.

4) At the end of each ACGME clinical rotation, an L6 form must be filled out PER clinical rotation as part of the application process for California licensure. the L6 form can be found here: www.medbd.ca.gov/applicant/application_international.pdf

Note: In the event that some of the requirements are not fulfilled by the time of graduation at your medical school, it is highly recommended to complete these rotations after graduation and prior to starting residency, which may be setup by your medical school. If you happen to do a residency outside of California and have yet to fulfill all the requirements, it is possible to count the respective rotations done while in residency towards obtaining California licensure through a petition by contacting the California medical boards at (916) 263-2382. For instance, if you had a non-approved/non-ACGME Family Medicine rotation during medical school and you matched into a Family Medicine residency, it is possible to count the Family Medicine rotation completed during residency to obtaining California licensure in the future.