How do ECFMG-Widows spend their lives?

Anxs4Residency said:

I've heard that there are tens of thousands of such persons, living in the States presently.

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Tens of thousands??!?? Like, let's say 35,000 as a ballpark? Think about how many people that is. Enough to fill a baseball stadium and more than the population of many small towns... many of whom would love to have their own doctor, no matter where he/she is from (see below).

I seriously doubt this to be true. And, from whom exactly did you hear this outrageous sounding figure anyway? Someone on a message board similar to this? Provide a source if you can. Otherwise, all I can say is what someone once said in another thread on this forum, "47% of all statistics are made-up on the spot." Sorry for the sarcasm, but you get my drift, right?

Anxs4Residency said:

...can turn out to be a lifelong curse for many-
as then, they can never really give-up the ghost of that hope-
its like entering the limbo-state, like- 'instead of the
death of or the divorce from a husband, you simply
land-up loosing him in a huge crowd'- then, you can never
officially call yourself a widow or a divorcee, and always
have that hope, albeit small, lingering in the back of your
mind- that he may just return one day or you'll find a
residency some year! A nightmare at best!

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Aren't we being a tad bit melodramatic?

Most of the people as you describe them who don't end up in a residency, after becoming ECFMG certified, pretty much fall into at least one (and sometimes two, if not all three) of the three categories below - and it has little or nothing to do with board scores:

(1) The Geographically Stubborn: These are the people who insist on staying in one area for any host of reasons (e.g., family, cultural network, children, etc.) and will continue to look and look and look, year after year, hoping something opens up in their self-defined limited area.

(2) The Intrasigently Narrowminded: These are the people who may have practiced in a particular field back in their native country, and will not consider changing to a different career path. For example, an opthamologist with twenty years of experience will continue to apply to opthamology residencies year after year, never considering changing to Family Practice or Internal Medicine.

(3) The Tragically Unpresentable: This is the doctor who somehow managed to pass TOEFL and the CSA, but is still nearly incomprehensible in English, maybe refuses (either unwittingly or stubbornly) to conform and fit in to the acceptable Western cultural ideal for a doctor, and/or has a major personality defect that comes out during the interview process. In this case, nothing short of an image consultant can help... and perhaps additional classes in English at Berlitz.

So, it's not "the man" who's often holding these doctors back, especially if they already have their ECFMG certificate, but the individual seeking a particular appointment in a particular location himself/herself. There are plenty of residency spots that go unfilled each and every year. It has more to do with the willingess - or lack of willingness - to be creative and improve their total residency application package desirability by either considering going to an other-than-their-desired location, perhaps changing fields, or working on their image.

-Skip

P.S. You don't need to hit 'enter' each time you get to the end of a line when you're typing in your message. The text window will automatically carry forward what you type onto the next line. You only need to use enter when you're ready to start a new paragraph. Just a little extra tip for you, seeing as you're relatively new to this forum (and maybe Internet forums, in general... just speculating).

Dude, widow... I just posted your stats in another thread called IMG Match #'s... I don't know how to do all those fancy-schmancy link to other thread crap... so if one of the Moderators could paste it, it would clear up the fake stats everyone's been throwin around...
thanks

Anxs4 seems to be right on the money. Perhaps, this article would open up the eyes of folks who still want to daydream.

MelissaRichards said:

Anxs4 seems to be right on the money. Perhaps, this article would open up the eyes of folks who still want to daydream.

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sounds to me like you have the exact same mentality Melissa, and looks like youre new friend is as welcome to this topic as you were, judging by the replies in which you recieved. I 100% agree with Skip.

MelissaRichards said:

Anxs4 seems to be right on the money. Perhaps, this article would open up the eyes of folks who still want to daydream.

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You need to get a life, and stop making up "user names" and posting the same article.

MelissaRichards said:

Anxs4 seems to be right on the money. Perhaps, this article would open up the eyes of folks who still want to daydream.

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Did you even read the article you linked on the other thread, Melissa?

This is straight from it...

In the past year, some medical leaders have begun to challenge conclusions about a physician surplus. They say the problem isn't an oversupply but a "maldistribution problem" because rural and poor urban residents still don't have easy access to a physician.

...

"There are areas constantly begging for physicians," says Jeff Towns, vice president of the Michigan Health Council.

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Not only does this point speak exactly to what I'm saying, Melissa, but the article further underscores the fact that many of these doctors with vast experience in their fields in their native countries are unwilling to consider a change in specialty.

But, wait, it gets better...

"I've sent 500 applications all over the country and I'm getting nowhere," says Dr. Boshra Almoayed, 35, who came to the United States in 1992 from Yemen. By contrast, more than 90 percent of American graduates who participate in an annual computer match for residency jobs get one.

Almoayed wants to serve the Arabic community as a psychiatrist. There are few female, Arabic-speaking psychiatrists, she says. She has quit her job as a substance abuse counselor at Dearborn's Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services to apply for residencies full time. Top doctors in the field have encouraged her to go in person for interviews or to call psychiatry department heads for interviews, but no one will return her calls, she says.

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I just simply don't believe her. She's either (1) outright lying, or (2) invoking hyperbole to garner sympathy. First off, there are not 500 psychiatry residency programs in the U.S.!!! There are only 181! So, she's grossly exagerrating by almost a factor of three, unless she's applied to every psychiatry residency program almost three times... . Secondly, why didn't she apply to programs in 1992 when she came?!???!? She's been out of medicine for 12 years! What does she expect? Lastly, no one will return her calls? Come on! Give me a break! There is a HUGE shortage of psychiatrists in the U.S. Most of the psych residents I met during my clerkship were foreign grads!! I'd believe this if she'd been honest and said what she's really done: probably weakly inquired about 5-6 programs in the city she's living in, and when no one called her back she failed to follow up on her own. (Five hundred applications... give me a break!)

I smell a rat.

And, nsh_00 also had it right when s/he said I missed a category... some simply lack the proper motivation, which also encompasses probably a little bit of all three of the categories I listed as well.

Look, no one is going to simply roll-over and give you a residency. You have to want it. And, people will make excuses all day long for not getting what they want, especially when they don't want it bad enough. It's easy to sit back and play the "woe is me" game. I just don't have any sympathy for such people. Sorry.

-Skip

Skip Intro said:

...
Look, no one is going to simply roll-over and give you a residency. You have to want it. And, people will make excuses all day long for not getting what they want, especially when they don't want it bad enough. It's easy to sit back and play the "woe is me" game. ...
-Skip

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First Skip, let me praise your writing style ... you are a great writer Skip!
With that out of the way, let me make a comment that- "It is so easy to sit on the comfortable side of the fence in life and lecture, Skip! Do you think most of those distraught people mentioned in the article, don't have any brains, that they will sit around and not work hard to get the residency? - especially when they are already ECFMG-certified?? There are so many, so many sufferers out there Skip, that perhaps a person in your position may never come to know! Some have been disillusioned so heavily by now, that they feel ashamed to publicly call themselves as MDs graduated from a foreign country, as they are presently delivering pizzas in the States and running laundry businesses. These days, because of the liability etc. concerns, no hospital allows them to volunteer also, to get some experience. And without US experience, things get almost impossible. So, they are facing the classical chicken-and-egg problem and internalizing it as "the system is simply shut-out for them. Insiders don't want too many of them around, as it will perhaps dilute their own potential. The system treats them, as if they treated animals abroad, if they got that clinical experience in a foreign land" When I get some more time, I'll dig up some more from my archives and send you the stories and statistics of these ... Children of the Lesser God!" May the Lord have some mercy on them and help them in their plight.

endodoc said:

You need to get a life, and stop making up "user names" and posting the same article.

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shut it f00b and let the big boy's handle this ahahahahahah.