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Become a psychiatrist

You can download this infographic as a jpeg and print it out.

RACGP Find out more on How to be a doctor General Practitioner

From high school

Check with the university or universities you are applying to about the entry requirements for high school graduates. This may involve:

Some universities offer a 5 or 6 year undergraduate medical degree.

Some universities offer a slightly different pathway for high school graduates. If you have provisional entry into medicine from high school, you will do a 2 year accelerated undergraduate degree (e.g. Biomedical Science) before entering medical school. In this pathway you will do a 4 year medical degree following on from your 2 year accelerated biomedical science / health science degree.

Graduate entry

Check with the university or universities you are applying to about the entry requirements for university graduates. This may involve:

  • GAMSAT – you may need to register for and sit the Graduate Medical School Admissions Test and achieve a high score (click here for Dr Gerry Considine’s tips for GAMSAT success)
  • GPA – your grade point average, that is, the average of your grades in your undergraduate university degree (the highest being 7) may be used as part of the entry criteria
  • Interview – an interview my also be used by the university as a way of selecting which students will gain entry into their medical school

In Australia the medical degree is generally 4 years when you are entering as a university graduate.

Medical Degree (4 to 6 years)

As you will have noted above, Medical degrees in Australia are between 4 and 6 years depending on whether you are coming into the degree as a university undergraduate or graduate.

Internship (1 year)

During this year a number of rotations are completed in different departments in a hospital.

Residency (1 or more years)

More rotations in a hospital. In the psychiatry training pathway, the intern year is mandatory and you can apply for the psychiatry vocational training program following internship. However, some doctors will move on to one or more years of residency before they can gain entry into the vocational training program of their choice.

Vocational training (5 years for psychiatry)