Similar deal with an acquaintance of mine – only he ended up losing his licenses. He had two Hospital privilege suspensions and two treatment center stays before he “voluntarily” surrendered his license - after he was arrested for a DUI. I was flabbergasted that it took as long as it did – really scary to me. Apparently if at some point he is clean and sober he can cone before the Board to get his licensees back even now.
Anyway, apparently there was a Law Firm Interested in him as an expert witness. [I can imagine the cross “Weren’t you an addict Doctor who lost everything by your Drug use?”] - he didn’t take that job, but it seemed as if the law firm was pretty serious about it.]
He owns a failing retail establishment now, that is what he actually did, had - some - dough left from the fat years and bought a shop.
My mom’s a nurse’s aid and (I’m not sure what the job’s called) one of the people who sit in a room reading EKG’s was a doctor in Cuba. One problem someone defecting from their homeland is that their alma mater might not be willing to provide transcripts or verify that they graduated.
Cite? This used to be a problem years ago, but these days each state board is pretty damn diligent about notifying other boards about their disciplinary actions. And most state boards who are notified of a problem in another state tend to likewise not allow a doc with a suspended or revoked license in one state to practice in theirs. At least not without investigation.
The National Practitioner Data Bank tends to be a good resource regarding action by any board in any US state.
Often, they continue to practice, at least for a while. If they have an attorney working with them or under them in a firm, they can have that attorney file everything under the active Bar number, or make all the appearances, or whatever. I know of one case where the disbarred attorney used the associate’s Bar number without her permission, which was pretty messed up.
It happens more than you might think. Plenty of people will give money to anybody with an office and a business card, when a simple phone call or website check will tell you his/her Bar status.
Really? I don’t think I’d let that guy anywhere near my business or my money, what with him having proved himself so trustworthy already…
Usually it was some combination of the above. The typical situation was a 50-something former specialty physician with little to no English, who had been out of med school for at least 20 - 30 years. Try passing a high-level examination in, say, biochemistry, which you haven’t touched in 25 years, in a language that you don’t speak very well - those exams are difficult even for smart, U.S.-trained native English speakers.
Combine that with the very different way some medical and scientific subjects were taught in the USSR (psychology, in particular, and related subjects were taught quite differently, even leaving aside all the developments in general sciences and medicine in the past couple of decades), and with the fact that at the time, even if you managed to pass your boards, most hospitals weren’t keen on considering a 50-something Soviet-trained doctor for a residency, and you can begin to see why only a handful ever got fully relicensed.
The few who did make it all the way through were usually young, with good English, and had only been out of med school for a few years, and even they usually had to study really hard for the exams and/or take them multiple times.
For the most part, confirming credentials wasn’t an issue; this was right before the breakup of the USSR (I worked there from 1990 - 91), by which time the Soviet authorities generally didn’t care who left, and except for a couple of people doing politically sensitive medical research, all were allowed to take original diplomas and transcripts and research publications with them. (One of our clients had the eminently depressing job of head of pediatric oncology at a hospital in Ukraine, for example. And I have no idea why the woman who did a dissertation on the land molluscs of Azerbaijan couldn’t take it with her, but that’s a rant for another day.)
The main problem with evaluating educational equivalency was for transfer credit purposes at the undergrad level for those who had partially completed degrees when they emigrated (in all fields, not just in medicine). The University of Illinois at Chicago was a particular PITA. One of my clients had gotten through 4.5 years of a 5-year degree (at the Soviet equivalent of Cal Tech) which would have been the equivalent of a master’s degree in chemical engineering, but they refused to grant her transfer credit unless she provided a professionally done, certified, notarized English translation of not only her diploma and transcripts, but course catalog descriptions. This would have cost almost as much as having her take all the classes over again, and they refused to consider the possibility of letting her test out of a single one of the courses, even something as basic as calculus (because it’s not like Russia has ever produced any mathematicians or scientists or anything…sigh).
I tried to call up the registrar and talk some sense into them (for example, Soviet universities don’t issue American-style course catalogs with detailed descriptions, because most degree programs didn’t allow for any electives, so what was the point?) They actually insisted that she should be able to provide an English-language catalog.
While I don’t know if this ever happens in real life, but in a couple of TV shows and movies, I’ve seen disbarred (or otherwise seperated from their professional communities) running red-light clinics catering to folks who couldn’t afford to go to a “real” doctor for whatever reason (ie: money, legal problems, too many questions asked, etc.)
The only examples I can think of off the top of my head here though is the doctor from Johnny Mnemonic and Doctor Franklin from Babylon 5 (who ran a free red-light clinic in down-below using medical supplies that kept getting misplaced from the station’s stores). If it happens in real life, it probably isn’t the kind of thing you’d find in the Yellow Pages anyways.