Thousands of international medical graduates come to the United States to start their career as physicians. Many of them, however, are not aware of the challenges and problems that they may encounter along the way. These difficulties can range from the language and cultural barriers to a lack of confidence and self-esteem. Many students are also unaware of the other career options besides getting into a clinical residency program. As a result of these issues, a great number of foreign medical students remain unmatched into the National Resident Matching Program. Not matching can be devastating for these graduates, both financially and medically. Students often suffer from psychological effects like major depression and generalized anxiety disorder. This book outlines the potential problems faced by these graduates and their possible solutions. Each chapter collects research evidence, interviews and surveys to gather information to work on each possible problem one by one and describes a solution in great detail. Comprised of thirty chapters, each chapter is broken down into smaller sub-sections to investigate the main theme in depth. Issues addressed include the different types of international medical graduates and their lives in the United States, differences in the education system and healthcare system, the triangle of residency, language and cultural barriers, lack of professional contacts, confidence, self-image and self-esteem issues, and restriction to specific fields and career paths. Written by experts in the field, International Medical Graduates in the United States is a first of its kind text that addresses the biggest issues faced by foreign medical graduates in today's world.

Many thousands of international graduate physicians from diverse medical specialties serve the health care needs of the United States, and one-in-four psychiatry residents are international medical graduates. International Medical Graduate Physicians: A Guide to Training was created by prominent leaders in academic psychiatry to support the success of these international medical graduate physicians as they complete their clinical training and enter the physician workforce in this country. This insightful title has been developed as a valuable resource, filled with key information and personal narratives, to foster optimal wellbeing and decisionmaking of IMG physicians as they navigate their careers. The text is thorough in scope and replete with perspectives, reflections, and tailored guidance for the reader. Many of the chapters are based on the direct and diverse life experiences of the authors. A unique and thoughtful contribution to the literature, this Guide will be of great value to international physicians and to their teachers and supervisors in psychiatry as well as other specialties of medicine.

A one-of-a-kind roadmap for foreign medical graduates seeking positions in the United States. Includes user-friendly advice on obtaining a visa; moving to and living in America; passing the USMLE, CSA, and TOEFL; developing residency survival skills; and practicing medicine successfully in the USA.

This report describes recent trends in the international migration of doctors and nurses in OECD countries. Over the past decade, the number of doctors and nurses has increased in many OECD countries, and foreign-born and foreign-trained doctors and nurses have contributed to a significant extent. New in-depth analysis of the internationalisation of medical education shows that in some countries (e.g. Israel, Norway, Sweden and the United States) a large and growing number of foreign-trained doctors are people born in these countries who obtained their first medical degree abroad before coming back. The report includes four case studies on the internationalisation of medical education in Europe (France, Ireland, Poland and Romania) as well as a case study on the integration of foreign-trained doctors in Canada.

The United States does not have enough doctors. Every year since the 1950s, internationally trained and osteopathic medical graduates have been needed to fill residency positions because there are too few American-trained MDs. However, these international and osteopathic graduates have to significantly outperform their American MD counterparts to have the same likelihood of getting a residency position. And when they do, they often end up in lower-prestige training programs, while American-trained MDs tend to occupy elite training positions. Some programs are even fully segregated, accepting exclusively U.S. medical graduates or non-U.S. medical graduates, depending on the program’s prestige. How do international and osteopathic medical graduates end up so marginalized, and what allows U.S.-trained MDs to remain elite? Doctors’ Orders offers a groundbreaking examination of the construction and consequences of status distinctions between physicians before, during, and after residency training. Tania M. Jenkins spent years observing and interviewing American, international, and osteopathic medical residents in two hospitals to reveal the unspoken mechanisms that are taken for granted and that lead to hierarchies among supposed equals. She finds that the United States does not need formal policies to prioritize American-trained MDs. By relying on a system of informal beliefs and practices that equate status with merit and eclipse structural disadvantages, the profession convinces international and osteopathic graduates to participate in a system that subordinates them to American-trained MDs. Offering a rare ethnographic look at the inner workings of an elite profession, Doctors’ Orders sheds new light on the formation of informal status hierarchies and their significance for both doctors and patients.

Written in cooperation with the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, this is the one-source reference tool IMGs need to succeed in U.S. medicine and residency training.