I recently met one of my husband’s clients, who had been a doctor in Poland. Dave mentioned afterward that she was looking for a job. If I recall correctly, in Canada, it’s a matter of taking certain examinations and doing a residency period.
How does one become a doctor legal to practice in the US, after being a doctor in another country? The knowledge can’t be all that different - last I saw, the human body was a pretty standard model.
Absolutely.
What is not standard, alas, is the level and depth of training that physicians receive (at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels). Whereas one can have a reasonable expectation of competence for a Canadian medical school graduate, the same cannot be said of graduates from many foreign schools. I can’t provide a cite for this assertion except to say that over the last quarter century I have witnessed this again and again. This is all the more distressing since those foreign graduates who do get accepted for training with us have already been prescreened to be the “best” of the pool. I shudder to think what the proportion would be if one were to consider the entire cohort of foreign-trained physician applicants.
One explanation I have heard put forth is that for some foreign medical schools, you can buy your way in (and through). Another, is that for certain countries, political and religious affiliation is most important (and, indeed, that excellence in political and religious studies as part of the medical school curriculum is more important than doing well in the traditional areas).
(I will confine my comments to Canada where I have worked at two widely separated and hugely different medical schools.)
May I ask, which schools? And where are you now, when you mean ‘with us’?
My ex-wife’s Father studied general medicine in Guadalajara, Mexico. After he graduated, he tried numerous times to pass the exam (tough) in the USA, but never achieved success. I think he just didn’t have enough education in medicine.
The Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) is a non-profit certification program in Philadelphia dedicated to helping doctors of foreign medical schools to be certified in the US.
The certification examination is in two parts: one part to verify the medical graduate indeed has the required medical knoledge, and second, that they have a functional understanding of the English Language.
Well, I better just say one was in Alberta and one was in Ontario.
When I say “with us”, I mean it literally. I am relatively high up on the medical education food chain.
Being an Albertan, I know it can only be one of two places, one of which is where I was born, the other is my hometown. Thank you for the information regarding the OP.