Proceeding for licensing as foreign medical graduate? Read this
first.
Prior to your application for license to practice to the
medical regulators e.g. GMC, Irish medical council, Australian medical council you have to first complete
some requisites, in this article we will be discussing how to create an EPIC
account for registration with General medical council (GMC) UK & the Irish
medical council and get Epic verification of your credentials.
What is EPIC?
EPIC stands for electronic portfolio of international credentials
it’s a service by the US – Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates
(ECFMG), which provides primary medical qualification verification for physicians
and organizations worldwide.
How this works is, the doctor shares his medical
qualifications with epic which verifies the credentials from the issuing
university/college, this adds on to the doctor’s online portfolio, when he/she
needs to apply to a regulator e.g., GMC in UK or Irish medical council, they
only need access to your EPIC portfolio to confirm the applicant’s
qualification for licensing process.
Currently, the GMC and IMC require applicants to have their
primary medical qualification verified on their epic portfolio prior to initiating
their application.
How to create an EPIC account:
The first step is to request an account at the epic website. Select new to epic
and establish an account, which will take you to the registration form.
Prior to proceeding with the application ensure you have the
required documents and information with you as the registration will complete
only after you have submitted all the required information.
So read over all the required documents mention below prior
to proceeding with the application.
·
Coloured copy of your passport (photograph,
biodata, signature pages)
·
Coloured photograph of yourself
·
Your medical qualification information
·
Medical license (if applicable)
·
Credit/debit card for fee payment
Once you have all these ready, head-over to the epic website
and fill in the registration form with your biodata, medical school qualification
details, license details (add GMC or IMC to which you are applying), upload
your photograph and passport copies and finally pay the fee.
The account creation can take a day or two, you will receive
an email when your account is ready, use the provided details to login to your
epic account and head over to my identity documents, here you will get your EPIC
Identification Form (EIF), this form contains all the details you provided at
the time of account creation, once this form is available you need to get it
signed from notary for it to be acceptable. But don’t worry, all this is done
online and the fee charged at the registration includes the notarization.
EPIC uses the notary
cam services, head over to their website and sign-up with your epic
details, select the EPIC identification form for notarization, they will
schedule a video call where you will be asked some brief information and need
to show your passport. No need to panic, they will guide you at each step. Once
complete they will send the notarized form back to epic, and you will get an
email that your account is successfully setup.
The fee for the account creation is currently US$130
and includes epic account creation and certification of EPIC IDENTIFICATION
FORM by notarycam.
Verification of credentials:
After you have completed the account registration process
now comes the second step i.e. medical qualification credentialing.
Depending upon the regulators’ requirement you will need to
get your qualifications verified.
·
For GMC, only primary medical qualification is
required (mbbs/md)
·
For Irish medical council, primary medical
qualification as well as housejob/internship experience is also required. (Note:
The internship/housejob certificate should be issued by your home countries
medical regulator not the one provided by the hospital)
For this step you need to upload the required documents on
your epic portal, choose how you want the request for verification to be sent
normal or courier (which has its charges) and select the relevant bodies e.g.
GMC or IMC to which you want your verification report to be sent to.
EPIC will review your submitted documents and then send it to your degree awarding institute for verification, note that if your institute
demands verification charges that will need to be paid by you.
Now you will just have to wait for the verification process
to complete, and the report will be sent to GMC or IMC by itself when received by
EPIC, at that time you can proceed with the licensing application.
Fee for credentialing is US$100 per credential and includes,
Primary-source verification of credential, Real-time updates on the status of
your verification request & Electronic storage of your verified credential.
Courier fee is US$30 & allows tracking of your request.
First report for each credential is sent free of charge, afterwards
it costs US$50.
When to create an epic account
The epic account is for life, so you can create the account
anytime, but as the verification process can take time, it is recommended to
start at least 3 months prior to proceeding with licensing application.
Also, the verification reports sent are for a period of one
year.
If you have already got your credentials verified for usmle
you will just need to create an epic account and submit a verification report to
your regulator, no need for verification again.
Australian medical council exam and license for FMGS 2022