"The Pecking Order!"...What's your opinion?...May even help in interviews!

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Do U think the US incr limitations on the # of intl. docs/med stdnts coming 4 med. ?

  • Yes

    Votes: 25 58.1%
  • No

    Votes: 9 20.9%
  • Unsure

    Votes: 9 20.9%

  • Total voters
    43
  • Poll closed .

riceman04

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So I received this e-mail a few days ago that in it contained an article discussing the "Brain Drain" that is occuring in third world countries partially due to the interest of native physicians/med school grads leaving for english language based countries. I do not have the link to the article so I just copied and pasted this into here. You will notice that a trickle dow affect is occuring that may even effect indirectly affect your admission to medical school. What is your opinion on this?....Answer the poll also!This may even be a good topic of discussion for your medical school interviews. ENJOY!

The poll question is written out in full form several posts down from here.

NYT: Study Finds Doctors Abandoning Poor Nations for Rich Ones

By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: October 26, 2005

A new study documents for the first time the devastating exodus of
doctors from Africa and the Caribbean to the wealthy, English-speaking nations of the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, which now depend on international medical graduates for a quarter of their physicians.
Its findings are to be published on Thursday in the New England Journal of
Medicine. The study is likely to fuel an already furious debate about the role
the developed world is playing in weakening African public health systems
that already have been hit with pandemics that have sent life expectancies
into a downward spiral in some countries.
Dr. Agyeman Akosa, the director general of Ghana's health service, said in a telephone interview from Geneva, where he is attending a World Health Organization forum on the global medical staffing crisis, that his country's public health system was virtually collapsing because it was losing not just many of its doctors, but its best ones. "I have at least nine hospitals that have no doctor at all and 20 hospitals with only one doctor looking after a whole district of 80,000 to 120,000 people," Dr. Akosa said. Women in obstructed labor all too often suffer terrible complications or death because there is no obstetrician to attend to the birth, he said. The study found that Ghana, with only 6 doctors for each 100,000 people, has lost 3 out of every 10 doctors it has educated to the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, each of which has more than 220 doctors per 100,000 people.

Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan, a professor of medicine and public health at George
Washington University, who carried out the study, tapped into databases in
those four countries to determine where their international medical graduates
originated. Dr. Mullan said the inflow of doctors was less the result of
deliberate policies in the wealthy countries than of their failure to produce enough doctors to fill their own needs. For example, the United States has
about 17,000 medical school graduates each year for 22,000 first-year residency slots. "One of the most important things the United States can do for global health,
frankly, is to educate more physicians in the United States to work in
the United States and diminish the vacuum that pulls physicians out of
the rest of the world, particularly from the poorest countries," Dr. Mullan said.
He described the international market in medical workers as a pecking order,
with the United States at the pinnacle. The United States, in addition to
seeking doctors from developing countries, has also netted 8,471 doctors
from Canada, 3,360 from Britain and 1,071 from Australia. Those rich
countries,in turn, seek doctors from further down the pecking order.
The biggest losers are the small- to medium-sized countries of Africa and
the Caribbean. Another study, published Monday by the World Bank,
detected a similar pattern in the broader flight of college-educated people to
Western industrialized democracies. Dr. Mullan's research found that Jamaica, for example, has lost 41 percentof its doctors and Haiti, 35 percent, while Ghana lost 30 percent and South Africa, Ethiopia and Uganda, 14 to 19 percent. Although countries with fewer than 1,000 doctors were not included
in thestudy because some of their data is unreliable, Dr. Mullen said he does
have reliable figures from four of these countries. Almost 6 out of 10 doctors
educated in Liberia have left for the four rich countries studied, he said, while
Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Zambia have each lost a fifth to a quarter of their
physicians.

In an editorial that accompanies Dr. Mullan's article, Lincoln C. Chen,
director of the Global Equity Center at Harvard University, and Jo Ivey
Boufford, a professor of health policy at New York University, call the
exodus of publicly trained doctors "a silent theft" of the richest
countries fromthe poorest ones. Crumbling public health systems in poor countries, they wrote, also threaten the health of Americans in the face of potential outbreaks of avian flu and SARS. "Protecting Americans requires viral detection and interdiction at points of origin, which are undermined by the depletion abroad of qualified professionals," they wrote. Public health leaders in Africa also say they will have to reform their own ailing systems. Francis Omaswa, who served as director general of Uganda's health service until July, said half its doctor positions are vacant - and that the exodus of doctors is not the only cause. For example, he said, some unemployed doctors cannot find jobs because they are not adequately advertised. Dr. Omaswa, now a special advisor to the World Health Organization on
human resources for health, is helping devise a set of proposals for both African and developed countries aimed at easing the staffing crisis. "Africa
cannot solve it alone," he said.


Good luck to everyone who is going through the app process right now...take everything day by day!
Remember it is a possible interview topic for discussion ;) ;) !

The question has been edited below:
Note: I had to shorten it b/c I ran out of space and at the time my train of thought did not allow me to think to just add the question in this space instead!

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Do you think the US is not so stringent on this b/c it reduces the overall cost of training physicians here?

I am asking b/c I do not know, but am very curios about this subject matter!

cya!
 
I would vote in your poll - but have no friggin clue what the heck you are asking... try spelling it all out, and maybe throwing a verb or something in there, and then we can vote.
 
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Flopotomist said:
I would vote in your poll - but have no friggin clue what the heck you are asking... try spelling it all out, and maybe throwing a verb or something in there, and then we can vote.


Wow I never expected such an intense statement from you. I initially tried to write out my question in full length but when I ran out of room I realized that I would have to improvise.....So instead of you coming on here and trying to make it seem like I am some idiot who has no understanding of english language, why dont you suggest a way to help shorten the question and then post it SO PEOPLE WILL UNDERSTAND!

I guess everyone has their post where they come across as nothing more than a jackass!
 
riceman04 said:
Wow I never expected such an intense statement from you. I initially tried to write out my question in full length but when I ran out of room I realized that I would have to improvise.....So instead of you coming on here and trying to make it seem like I am some idiot who has no understanding of english language, why dont you suggest a way to help shorten the question and then post it SO PEOPLE WILL UNDERSTAND!

I guess everyone has their post where they come across as nothing more than a jackass!

it is true that your poll question doesn't make a lick of sense
try not using "4" for "for" and "U" for "you"
 
I am confused as well.

Is your poll asking if the U.S. should decrease the number of foreign doctors coming to the U.S.?

If so, would that include U.S. citizens who were trained overseas?
 
The US uses internation medical grads to fill the gap between the # of US grads and the # of open residencies. There is an article on this in JAMA last week.
 
riceman04 said:
Wow I never expected such an intense statement from you. I initially tried to write out my question in full length but when I ran out of room I realized that I would have to improvise.....So instead of you coming on here and trying to make it seem like I am some idiot who has no understanding of english language, why dont you suggest a way to help shorten the question and then post it SO PEOPLE WILL UNDERSTAND!

I guess everyone has their post where they come across as nothing more than a jackass!

d00d, simple. Change your poll question to a very simple "Please see below [post #X] for the full question."

Then, in post #X, ask the question in a way that makes sense.

Seriously, that question is worthless as it is, don't be sensitive, it's just a fact. I am interested in this thread, but still haven't voted because I don't understand the question.

PS, I didn't think flopotomist sounded like a jackass at all, but your reply to him made you sound like one.

Erehbodeh chill.... :cool:
 
Indryd said:
d00d, simple. Change your poll question to a very simple "Please see below [post #X] for the full question."

Then, in post #X, ask the question in a way that makes sense.

Seriously, that question is worthless as it is, don't be sensitive, it's just a fact. I am interested in this thread, but still haven't voted because I don't understand the question.

PS, I didn't think flopotomist sounded like a jackass at all, but your reply to him made you sound like one.

Erehbodeh chill.... :cool:

usually if someone is really sincere then they would not use words like "friggin" (which to me reads f-ing). I was in a rush to get this posted b/c I kept getting logged off and the thread kept getting erased....I thought maybe people knew the short form of words..

I apologize for coming off as a jackass but at the same time if you think something should be worded differently then just say so without using sarcastic/condescending/etc... language.

Here is my question: Do you think the US (US med schools) should draft a plan that would further restrict the number of international medical students (not including US citizens who trained at foreign med schools) who can gain entrance into medical school (here in the US)?
Do you think this also apply to international physicians who seek to practice as a physician here in the US?

:(
 
dilated said:
it is true that your poll question doesn't make a lick of sense
try not using "4" for "for" and "U" for "you"

I had to b/c I ran out of space
 
riceman04 said:
usually if someone is really sincere then they would not use words like "friggin" (which to me reads f-ing). I was in a rush to get this posted b/c I kept getting logged off and the thread kept getting erased....I thought maybe people knew the short form of words..

I apologize for coming off as a jackass but at the same time if you think something should be worded differently then just say so without using sarcastic/condescending/etc... language.

Here is my question: Do you think the US (US med schools) should draft a plan that would further restrict the number of international medical students (not including US citizens who trained at foreign med schools) who can gain entrance into medical school (here in the US)?
Do you think this also apply to international physicians who seek to practice as a physician here in the US?

:(


Ahhh...nice and coherent! ;o)

My answer was yes, but I wonder about letting foreign docs train here if they are required to return and serve their own countries...?
 
Indryd said:
Ahhh...nice and coherent! ;o)

My answer was yes, but I wonder about letting foreign docs train here if they are required to return and serve their own countries...?
Besides being hard to force doctors out who want to stay, we'd be paying for physicians to study here who aren't going to be practicing here. While this could be viewed as altruistic, I think it's better for third-world doctors to be trained in the environment they will practice in, allowing them to learn about the parasites, lack of resources, etc. that they wouldn't otherwise learn here but will definitely need to know there.

Rather than directling limiting international MDs from our residencies, we should increase enrollment at our medical schools to produce more American MDs, and thus make it more difficult for international MDs to get a residency here. And, we should institute more programs helping doctors here who want to work abroad (pay off loans if you promise to work in Africa for 2-4 years, etc...)
 
riceman04 said:
usually if someone is really sincere then they would not use words like "friggin" (which to me reads f-ing). I was in a rush to get this posted b/c I kept getting logged off and the thread kept getting erased....I thought maybe people knew the short form of words..

I apologize for coming off as a jackass but at the same time if you think something should be worded differently then just say so without using sarcastic/condescending/etc... language.

Here is my question: Do you think the US (US med schools) should draft a plan that would further restrict the number of international medical students (not including US citizens who trained at foreign med schools) who can gain entrance into medical school (here in the US)?
Do you think this also apply to international physicians who seek to practice as a physician here in the US?

:(

If we have a shortage, why do people keep talking about the prediction there will be too many doctors in the US? And, no, we shouldn't limit people from other countries to come study medicine in the US, because they are the ones more likely to make money here and take it back to their country/villages, where it is needed. If anything, limit the number of residency positions open to people from other countries so med schools will be forced to open more seats to fill their own residency positions.
Thirdly, if these countries are so worried about doctors leaving, they should limit the number that emmigrate (like many other countries have a lottery, where a random few of any occupation can emmigrate). They would have to somehow enforce it (no bribery), but nothing's perfect.
 
riceman04 said:
Wow I never expected such an intense statement from you. I initially tried to write out my question in full length but when I ran out of room I realized that I would have to improvise.....So instead of you coming on here and trying to make it seem like I am some idiot who has no understanding of english language, why dont you suggest a way to help shorten the question and then post it SO PEOPLE WILL UNDERSTAND!

I guess everyone has their post where they come across as nothing more than a jackass!
Sorry, I also skipped the poll because I am not an 1337 4/\x0r.
 
Hey rice, sorry, my post was an example of what happens when body language is left out of a post... I was attempting a gentle tease/ribbing as I have nothing but respect for your normally intelligent, well written posts. That is why I posted - the way the poll question was written was so out of character for you, I thought it would be funny to tease you (and set myself up for a flame about the definition of a verb at the same time.)
 
Flopotomist said:
Hey rice, sorry, my post was an example of what happens when body language is left out of a post... I was attempting a gentle tease/ribbing as I have nothing but respect for your normally intelligent, well written posts. That is why I posted - the way the poll question was written was so out of character for you, I thought it would be funny to tease you (and set myself up for a flame about the definition of a verb at the same time.)


no prob...when I saw that I was like..."was that flop?"... I think I was being overly sensitive last night...probably b/c I was mad about something already before I logged back on last night!

It's all good flop!

By the way, congrats on the interview invite!!!!!!! :clap: :clap: :clap: :D :D
 
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