Your doctor didn’t graduate from a U.S. medical school? That’s just fine, study suggests

Some U.S. patients -- or even fellow doctors -- might be less than comfortable with a foreign-born physician who didn’t graduate from a U.S. medical school. They shouldn’t be, a new study suggests.

Patients treated for congestive heart failure or heart attack had similar mortality rates regardless of whether they were cared for by graduates of U.S. medical schools or non-U.S. medical schools, concludes an analysis published today in the journal Health Affairs. Further, patients of non-U.S. citizens who graduated from a foreign medical school had lower mortality rates while in the hospital -- a fairly important marker, most people would agree -- than did patients of U.S. citizens who graduated from U.S. medical schools.

Of note, patients cared for by U.S. citizens who received their medical degrees abroad fared relatively poorly in terms of mortality while in the hospital.

Such findings, and reassurances (except for that previous paragraph), are important now more than ever. As the researchers note in the first sentence of their study: “Graduates of international medical schools make up approximately one-quarter of U.S. practicing physicians.”

Here’s the abstract of that doctor-quality study.

And a fuller (and readily available) picture as presented in Health Affairs a couple of years back -- in case you’re sufficiently intrigued to do further reading: The International Medical Graduate Pipeline: Recent Trends in Certification and Residency Training.

-- Tami Dennis