13 - 11 Years as an ER Attending. Then She Started Over in Norway

So you send in the application.

A lot of people, I don't know if it's a lot because I don't know that there's so many of us Americans here that have done this, but people will have to write back to their medical school and have them try and calculate the hours.

Some people will just sort of try and guesstimate and then have the schools usually happy to sign off on how many hours you spent in the classroom.

But they want pretty detailed reports of like all of your classes that you took in medical school and whatnot and training.

And so you'll send that in.

They take then 11 months, up to 11 months to evaluate that.

So then you're just kind of sitting.

In the meantime, you need to take a language test.

So you have to pass Norwegian at, they call it the B2 level, which actually isn't it's not a terribly high level.

It's honestly not high enough to really get by in the hospital.

Like you can talk at a B2 level.

So I'd say that's like, yeah.

What would I call that? It'd be like, minimally advanced language skills, not highly advanced.

But then once you get in the hospital, you will realize like, oh my gosh, it's quite difficult.

But then you learn quickly.

Like everyone that's a physician has done that before.

But I will tell you, later in life... your brain is not as plastic and it is the language thing was hard.

And we can talk more about language maybe later because Norwegian kind of has extra difficulties with all the different dialects that they have.

So it's not just like you learn Norwegian and you can talk to everyone in the country.

It unfortunately doesn't work like that.

But anyways, yeah.

So they take 11 months.

Meanwhile, you need to pass your language test.

And then they have two more courses, but you can't really take those till you get the first initial.

So you just have to wait a long time.