Foreign trained docs are just as good as US docs

Moral of the story: No need to worry if your doctor went to medical school in a different country.  If they did their residency here in the US, they are just as good as us folks who probably paid a heck of a lot more to go to school here in the good old US of A.

Source: AMA Morning Rounds 8/4/2010

Foreign-trained physicians as good as those in the US.

The Los Angeles Times (8/3, Dennis) "Booster Shots" blog reported, "Some US patients -- or even fellow doctors -- might be less than comfortable with a foreign-born physician who didn't graduate from a US medical school." But according to a newly publishedstudy in Health Affairs, "they shouldn't be."

        That assertion is based on an analysis of "244,153 hospitalizations of patients with congestive heart failure or acute heart attack," the Baltimore Sun (8/3, Walker) "Picture of Health" blog reported. Investigators eventually discovered that physicians "trained abroad provide medical care as good as that offered by US-trained physicians." On the other hand, "Americans who trained overseas had higher patient death rates."

        Specifically, the "percentage of in-hospital deaths for congestive heart failure was 3.4% for domestically trained doctors and 3.1% for internationally trained physicians," Modern Healthcare (8/3, Robeznieks) reported. "For foreign-trained doctors who were not US citizens during medical school, the rate death was 3%; for US citizens who trained abroad, it was 3.5%. For heart attack patients, the in-hospital death rate was 13.1% for domestically trained doctors, and 12.7% for those trained abroad."

        The team at the Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research "offered two possible reasons the Americans who went to foreign medical schools might not perform as well as doctors trained in the United States, or as well as foreign-born doctors," the New York Times (8/3, D7, Grady ) reported. "One is that many of the Americans who study medicine elsewhere do so because their grades and test scores were too low to get into medical school in the United States -- so they may be less capable in the first place. Another possibility is that some of the overseas medical schools Americans attend may not be up to par."

        Bloomberg News (8/3, Wechsler), the Wall Street Journal (8/3, Wang) "Health Blog" and HealthDay (8/3, Goodwin) also covered the study.