Fellowship after surgery residency in india

[Info123]

Hi,
I have a friend who lives in India and is a general surgeon there practicing for almost 3 -4 years now. He is planning to give his USMLE boards and pursue a career here in the US. Is it possible for him to directly get into some kind of fellowship or will it be mandatory for him to do a residency in the US first? If yes, what kind of fellowships can he apply for and how competitive will it be?
I would really appreciate if anyone could answer these questions for me.

Thank you so much.

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[dragonfly99]

Would investigate this through whoever accredits surgeons in the US (I believe it is American Board of Surgery or something like that). I believe the answer is that generally yes, would need to repeat residency in the US. General surgery residency in the US is 5 years. You generally cannot get around this requirement, I don't think...otherwise a LOT of people would try to do so. The way surgery is done in the US one usually does 5 years of general surgery residency and THEN a fellowship. Some of the surgical subspecialties (like ENT, urology, etc.), in fact a lot of them, now just have an integrated residency as well (starts out with a year or two of general surgery and then learn the subspecialty stuff). I don't think it will be very easy for him (and likely not possible) to just skip surgical residency. There may be exceptions made (like a famous academic/ published famous surgeon/scientist from another country) but I think those would have to be a special case and even those would probably be required to do some clinical training here before going to fellowship.

 

[mama]

Possible but only for highly skilled and world-renowned surgeons. During my away rotations I came across a couple of surgeons from India who never did a residency in the US (they were exempt by the board).

They were exceptional surgeons and apparently no one in the US could do what they could at that time. They refused to go through residency again and the board made an exception! So it is possible but you gotta be really brilliant.