Whatever the reasons for coming, the barriers to getting licensed in the U.S. the majority from countries that need their services. absorbs some 6,000 doctors from the rest of the world each year - India and Pakistan send the greatest number of doctors to the U.S. Mullan says the real problem is the "brain drain" of doctors from poor countries to wealthy ones. But there's no crisis in the fact that thousands of foreign doctors are unable to get licensed in the U.S. Fitzhugh Mullan, at the George Washington University Health Workforce Institute, says foreign-trained doctors are indispensable to the American health care system - about one in four doctors practicing in the United States were trained abroad.
Pointing to a drought of doctors on the horizon, some are now calling for measures to assist foreign-trained doctors in meeting the stringent requirements needed to practice medicine in the U.S.īut others question whether there’s a looming physician shortage, and criticize American dependence on foreign doctors.ĭr. Jeffrey Gross of the Massachusetts Immigrants and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, one of the authors of the report, says that across the country there could be more than 60,000 foreign-trained doctors who are not licensed. Deval Patrick's Advisory Council for Refugees and Immigrants. She is one of roughly 3,000 foreign-trained doctors in Massachusetts not licensed to practice in the U.S., according to a 2014 report by former Gov. It's a crucible even for someone who hadn’t studied medicine in different country, which in Tristan-Cheever's case took more than 10 years. Tristan-Cheever was applying for better jobs, and she was studying for the United States Medical Licensing Exam, which all doctors must pass before getting a residency. "And every night I was trying to study and applying." Instead, she found herself scrubbing toilets. And by the time she was 30, she had a busy practice as a pediatric surgeon in Brazil.īut in the early 2000s, a financial crisis in Brazil prompted her to migrate to the United States with hopes of resuming her practice here. Since she was 2 years old, Elisa Tristan-Cheever dreamed of being a doctor. (Jesse Costa/WBUR) This article is more than 5 years old. from Iran in 2004 with a degree in medicine, but is struggling to be accepted into a residency in the states.