I’ve read news articles about Doctors that immigrate to the U.S. that aren’t allowed to practice.
The best known case was Haing S. Ngor (Acadamey Award winner Killing Fields). Trained as a surgeon and gynecologist in Cambodia. He was imprisoned in a concentration by the Khmer Rouge. He survived and came to America. He was never allowed to practice medicine.
Does the U.S. accept any medical doctors from other countries? For example, Canada, England, France, Germany. Would we refuse to accept a Doctors qualification from a country with medical facilities equal to the U.S.? Is there a list of countries that we won’t accept their immigrants as doctors?
What about the reverse? Can a U.S. doctor practice medicine in France, Britain, Cambodia, Africa etc. without having his credentials challenged?
The way I know of is that a foreign-trained doctor will take a version of the testing that US-trained doctors take, and then go through a residency in the US. At least, this is what I can see from looking online and what I’ve encountered in working in the medical field.
Your medical school also has to have been recognized by the country you studied in. I don’t know what countries don’t have a school on that list.
Sounds like Canadian Doctors can work in the U.S. and American Docs can work in Canada.
I know Doctors without Borders sends teams to third world countries to work. My mom did anesthesia cases for an eye doctor in my hometown. He went to South America every year for a couple weeks to operate on patients that needed care. Mom thought about going with him to volunteer but she was always too busy with cases at the hospital.
A high percentage of graduates from McGill med decamp to the US upon graduation. There is a reason. New MDs are essentially required to go to the boonies and many refuse. But med school here is cheap, so…
I know quite a few doctors who went to medical school outside the U.S. but now practice within the country. First, as **Hari Seldon **said, it’s common for McGill med school grads to go to the U.S. to practice. I know several. Beyond that, the medical practice I go to is the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, which is one of the most respected in Northern California, and if you go to their “Find a Doctor” web page, you’ll see that many were educated outside the U.S.
And if you haven’t touched your basic sciences in 20 years because you’ve been working in a specialty area, it’s going to be wicked difficult to pass the boards.
(My first job was resettling Soviet refugees, and my office had 200+ doctors as clients. By the time I left that job, 2 of them had managed to pass the boards, and only one of those had been accepted into a resdiency.)
I’m not sure. Several of my nurses were from the Philippines. One of my consulting doctors was an older guy from India. Sounded like Apu on the Simpsons.
I wasn’t worried. I knew they had to meet U.S. requirements to work here. The nurses may have trained here. I didn’t ask.
My mom once worked with a nurse’s aid who was a heart surgeon in Cuba before he came over. She works with alot of nurses from the Phillipines too. Some of them used to be doctors.
Not only are their home nations deprived of doctors, but the US is employing people who quite possibly have the skills and expertise to work as doctors, but who may not be able to demonstrate them in the prescribed way needed to work in the USA, at jobs which do not fully utilise their skills.
Lose-lose for both nations, and I guess only a win for the immigrant doctor if the potential financial gain is worth the decrease in job satisfaction and the loss of family and community support triggered by the move to a new country.
“A better life” has to mean more than just “richer”, doesn’t it?
My wife is a foreign-trained dentist, and back when I investigated what it would take in Michigan, the requirements were some hours of dental legal courses and passing a state exam in English. She decided not to pursue it, though.
It’s largely a state matter. Her alma mater produces graduates that are qualified practice immediately in the state of California, for example. That’s because the state and the university reached a consensus on a curriculum that would allow such.
indeed its sad to know that foreign medical doctors cannot practice the profession without first passing the three steps Step 1 (basic), Step 2 ( 2 parts clinical and and theory) Step 3 ( theory). Even if you pass these steps you still have to be matched for the residency training. I have known a lot of foreign doctors who have been practicing their respective specialty fields but were unsuccessful to pass especially step 1. The big question is why do they have to take all these three steps? Why cant they just go apply for residency directly at least and just take the last step instead . I would agree on taking the three steps if the foreign medical graduate did not undergo a residency training abroad but if he had finished one, then at least step 3 would be sufficient. If one will go around USA one can find foreign trained doctors working not as doctors. Majority works in allied healthservices i.e. technicians, phlebotomists etc. A great deal also went to nursing, surgical assisting and medical coding. (FYI: residency training abroad depending on the field is from 3 to 5 years after this you take an exam written and oral if successful you become a fellow, then you take a specialty fellowship program 1 to 2 years as a sort of subspecialization and then yountake another exam and once successful you become a subspecialty fellow . An example is you take residency in surgery then you pass the exam, you become a fellow of general surgery then go for a subspecialization and took for instance pediatric surgery then afterwhich you become a pediatric surgeon)
Part of it (the Step 1,2,3) is to ensure proper certification and training- as the most common influx of medical graduates are from the Caribbeans. It’s cheaper to be trained there, less competitive to get into those locations (vs. a Medical school in the US), can usually finish up in 3 years, and a great location to live/study in. That said, many Americans go there for medical training, finish up and then try to come back to the United States to be placed into Residency. The way to 'Standardize" those students and compare them to the ones who’ve trained in US locations is to compare their scores on the Step 1,2,3’s basically.
It’s not so much the influx of doctors who’ve been training for 20+ years and all, but the system is more for those students who have just finished their training overseas and want to come back to the US to practice. The US medical system wants to ensure their training and qualifications are just as equivalent to those here in the US.
This came up in another thread and as I said there I am surprised as I know a Doctor who trained in Pakistan (Cardiologist) ad had about 10 years in the field. In 2000 his wife who worked for the UN was posted to NYC and he went with her and got a job as a consultant in a Hospital in the city pretty easily. I asked how long the certification process took and he said it was just interviews and showing his credentials. Basically by the time their house was set up he was good to go.
Maybe being the spouse of a UN worker helped? or maybe their is discretion to permit clearly qualified Docs?
