Hello,
I am a US citizen. I did my undergrad abroad.
Due to change of heart, I decided to pursue a career in medicine. I have 2 options:
enroll in a postbac and take premed prereqs or apply for carribean MD.
I am tempted to choose carribean MD to save the time and debt incurred to do the postbac. Also doing a postbac does not guarantee acceptance into a US MD or DO program.
I understand people do not recommend the carribean schools because it is hard to get a decent residency. For me, I want to pursue medicine because I like helping people. I am fine practicing as a family doctor or pediatrician.
My question is can graduates of Carribean MD schools practice as family medicine without residency or is it easy for them to get pediatrics or family medicine residency in the US?
Thanks.
Do you like the idea of being unemployed, never able to be a doctor, and driving for Uber? Because that's your more likely fate from going to a Carib diploma mill.
The point here isn't that there are successful Carib grads. The point is how many additional obstacles to success you face by going to a Carib school.
FROM THE WISE
@gyngyn
The pool of US applicants from the Caribbean is viewed differently by Program Directors. The DDx for a Caribbean grad is pretty off-putting: bad judgment, bad advice, egotism, gullibility, overbearing parents, inability to delay gratification, IA's, legal problems, weak research skills, high risk behavior. This is not to say that all of them still have the quality that drew them into this situation. There is just no way to know which ones they are. Some PD's are in a position where they need to, or can afford to take risks too! So, some do get interviews.
Bad grades and scores are the least of the deficits from a PD's standpoint. A strong academic showing in a Caribbean medical school does not erase this stigma. It fact it increases the perception that the reason for the choice was on the above-mentioned list!
Just about everyone from a Caribbean school has one or more of these problems and PDs know it. That's why their grads are the last choice even with a high Step 1 score.
There was a time when folks whose only flaw was being a late bloomer went Carib, but those days are gone. There are a number of spots at US schools with grade replacement for these candidates.
It's likely you'll be in the bottom half or two thirds of the class that gets dismissed before Step 1. The business plan of a Carib school depends on the majority of the class not needing to be supported in clinical rotations. They literally can't place all 250+ of the starting class at clinical sites (educational malpractice, really). If this happened at a US school, they be shut down by LCME or COCA, and sued.
The Carib (and other offshore) schools have very tenuous, very expensive, very controversial relationships with a very small number of US clinical sites. You may think you can just ask to do your clinical rotations at a site near home. Nope. You may think you don't have to worry about this stuff. Wrong.
And let's say you get through med school in the Carib and get what you need out of the various clinical rotation scenarios. Then you are in the match gamble. I don't need to say a word about this - you can find everything you need to know at nrmp.org.
You really need to talk to people who made it through Carib into residency, and hear the story from them. How many people were in their class at the start, how many are in it now? How long did it take to get a residency, and how did they handle the gap year(s) and their student loans? How many residencies did they apply to, how many interviews did they get, and were any of the programs on their match list anything like what they wanted?
A little light reading:
Million $ Mistake
Medical School at SGU
