Foreign Doctors = more complaints

[ndspider]

Over on kevinmd.com I found this link.
Basically
A breakdown of the figures revealed a "highly disproportionate" number of complaints were being made against medics trained overseas.

It also found a doctor is 64% more likely to be complained against if they qualified 20 years ago or longer.

I wonder what the SDN community thinks of this.
.Spider

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[Faebinder]

Over on kevinmd.com I found this link.
Basically
A breakdown of the figures revealed a "highly disproportionate" number of complaints were being made against medics trained overseas.

It also found a doctor is 64% more likely to be complained against if they qualified 20 years ago or longer.

I wonder what the SDN community thinks of this.
.Spider

Does the UK even have residencies? Does the study include US residencies?

 

[Nerdoscience]

I wonder if this generalizes to everywhere, especially the US. I'm assuming these are British statistics.

I am not surprised by those stats. All kinds of issues other than competency figure in, including doctor and patient prejudice, motivation for lodging a complaint, etc.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Does the UK even have residencies? Does the study include US residencies?

Yes, the UK has residencies and they are generally several years longer than their US counterparts.

The "study" does not include US residencies because it is only a report of the number of complaints by country of training to the General Medical Council, a UK medical governing body. It refers to "overseas trained" physicians - ie, physicians now working in the UK who did not go to medical school in the UK does not tell us specifically what the complaints are. YOu will not be suprised that in the US many more complaints are filed against non-US trained physicians, not necessarily because of their country of training but because of language barriers or perhaps, bias against the physician because of their country of origin. There are a fair few people in the US who cannot understand that medical training and competence have little to do with your accent or in most cases, where you trained.

 

[militarymd]

I have a small anesthesia practice (less than 10 MDs) . We have a number of foreign physiciains (heavy accent when speaking English).

They do get most of the complaints....mostly because our patients can't understand them.

 

[SoCuteMD]

I have a small anesthesia practice (less than 10 MDs) . We have a number of foreign physiciains (heavy accent when speaking English).

They do get most of the complaints....mostly because our patients can't understand them.

I have to say that this was my FIRST thought when I read the title of the thread.

If I can't understand a doctor, I am much more likely to complain!

 

[kungfufishing]

My prelim internship was through an IM program with several "I was a practicing physician for years in my home country" residents, mostly from India. My patients always trusted and liked me more, simply because I was obvously American. I found this to be completely ridiculous - I think the doctor with the accent who actually knows what he is doing is a quack, but the newbie American who is liable to kill me, I shore like that boy. He dont talk funny er nuthin.

 

[kungfufishing]

My prelim internship was through an IM program with several "I was a practicing physician for years in my home country" residents, mostly from India. My patients always trusted and liked me more, simply because I was obvously American. I found this to be completely ridiculous - "I think the doctor with the accent who actually knows what he is doing is a quack, but the newbie American who is liable to kill me, I shore like that boy. He dont talk funny er nuthin."

 

[JackBauERfan]

My prelim internship was through an IM program with several "I was a practicing physician for years in my home country" residents, mostly from India. My patients always trusted and liked me more, simply because I was obvously American. I found this to be completely ridiculous - "I think the doctor with the accent who actually knows what he is doing is a quack, but the newbie American who is liable to kill me, I shore like that boy. He dont talk funny er nuthin."

same way here, even though everyone in my intern class is pretty impressive with their presentations/knowledge base, I think they get a lot more attitude from nurses/patients. Most of them like me, but in reality, I of course need to read a whole lot more haha.

 

[matakanan]

One of my friends who is doin his residency in Uk...mentioned this a while back. If u can fake a British Accent.. either an RP/ Queen's English accent or a Cockney or whatever..then u have pretty much made it!
Its far easier, then to get through an interview and get a residency spot. So all that the foreign grads need, are those english fluency courses which help smoothen out the accent and create a Neutral accent.
In know that back in India, they do offer such 'accent-neutralising' courses to people working in Customer Care Call centres outsourced from US/USA/AUS etc.

 

[Apollyon]

One of my friends who is doin his residency in Uk...mentioned this a while back. If u can fake a British Accent.. either an RP/ Queen's English accent or a Cockney or whatever..then u have pretty much made it!
Its far easier, then to get through an interview and get a residency spot. So all that the foreign grads need, are those english fluency courses which help smoothen out the accent and create a Neutral accent.
In know that back in India, they do offer such 'accent-neutralising' courses to people working in Customer Care Call centres outsourced from US/USA/AUS etc.

The BellSouth call center I called for my DSL was in Pune, India, and the woman had a (just as you say it) neutral accent - clearly understandable, very smooth, but, still, I could identify an Indian element - but it was enough that I had to ask her where she was, in that she sounded on the phone like any of my friends that were born in India but grew up in the US with their family language being spoken at home. Interestingly, she gave me her name (which was like "Marianne Anderson" - that wasn't it, but it was just as wishy-washy white as that), but she said that they were told to use more Euro-centric/American pseudonyms for the American customers. I told her (after I heard her name) that I would believe anything, because a classmate was telling me that, with a billion and a half people, there's people with all sorts of names in India, and you certainly could find a "Rajiv Jones" or "Sanjay Smith" and not bat an eye.

 

[dawg44]

Chanting:
USA! USA! USA! USA!

 

[serenity]

Over on kevinmd.com I found this link.
Basically
A breakdown of the figures revealed a "highly disproportionate" number of complaints were being made against medics trained overseas.

It also found a doctor is 64% more likely to be complained against if they qualified 20 years ago or longer.

I wonder what the SDN community thinks of this.
.Spider

Now that UK is kicking foreign docs out ,I am not surprised that they are coming out with this data.
Not that I doubt the validity of the article.
Its amazing to see how the world works,when they needed'em they embraced them ,and now they are trying to defend why they are doing it.
There are numerous foreign doctors who are excellent and have flourishing practices which cannot be ignored.
I am a foreign doc and I have an accent(I don't think anybody has problems understanding it) and I am thankful I am not in UK where discrimination is thriving.