Foreign Medical Schools are Just as Good as American Medical Schools

When you are sick and have to go to the hospital, you want to make sure you receive the best possible care, right? Let’s say that you have a choice between a doctor who went to med school in the U.S., and one who went to med school in a foreign country. Which one is going to give you better health care?
Surprisingly, a recent study showed that there is not a relationship between where a doctor went to medical school and the quality of patient care he/she gives. The study was conducted in Pennsylvania and analyzed 244,153 people who had been hospitalized for heart attacks or heart failure. The study compared the length of hospital stays and death rates between foreign-trained doctors and doctors who were trained in the U.S.
There was a difference between American doctors who went to med school in another country and foreign doctors who studied in the U.S. The patients of the American doctors had longer hospital stays and higher death rates than the patients of the foreign doctors who studied in the United States. However, the study was unable to conclude if this was due to the quality of education the American doctors received in foreign countries or if the doctors just were not up to par with the foreign doctors.
In the past, some people have thought that foreign-educated doctors are not as well educated as American-educated doctors. However, there have been very few published works that confirm this.
So, if you are in the hospital waiting room, your best bet is to look for a doctor who went to medical school in his/her native country. And if you are planning to go to med school yourself, you might want to stay within your nation’s borders. Evidently it will make you a better doctor.
Via The Wall Street Journal