I remembered reading an article a few years ago about how difficult it is for foreign-trained doctors to practice medicine here in the U.S. It was in the New York Times and I found it:
Here’s what it says about the process:
*The process usually starts with an application to a private nonprofit organization that verifies medical school transcripts and diplomas. Among other requirements, foreign doctors must prove they speak English; pass three separate steps of the United States Medical Licensing Examination; get American recommendation letters, usually obtained after volunteering or working in a hospital, clinic or research organization; and be permanent residents or receive a work visa (which often requires them to return to their home country after their training).
The biggest challenge is that an immigrant physician must win one of the coveted slots in America’s medical residency system, the step that seems to be the tightest bottleneck. That residency, which typically involves grueling 80-hour workweeks, is required even if a doctor previously did a residency in a country with an advanced medical system, like Britain or Japan. The only exception is for doctors who did their residencies in Canada.
The whole process can consume upward of a decade — for those lucky few who make it through.*
So, it seems like there are three ways that a foreign student can become a doctor in the U.S.:
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Get a U.S. undergraduate and then U.S. medical degree. Going to a U.S. college as an undergrad isn’t that difficult if you have the money, but getting into a U.S. medical school can be very difficult as an international student - even if you do have the money in cash or liquid assets, and especially if you don’t.
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Get an undergraduate degree at home in Sweden or in Britain, and then go to med school in the U.S. See above, but even harder.
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Get medical training at home - which has its own challenges depending on the country you do it in - and then move to the U.S. and attempt to become qualified here. As you can see from the above, that’s no walk in the park either - you have to pass the USMLE, then volunteer or work in a hospital in a non-physician role for who knows how long so you can get American recommendation letters. In order to do that, you need a work visa - so basically some hospital or clinic has to hire you knowing that you want to go to medical school and won’t be a permanent employee of the company. Or you have to have connections. After you get the recommendations, then you need to get a residency slot. There are lots of great articles about how competitive residency slots are for new graduates of U.S. medical schools and Caribbean schools that participate in the match - so it’s probably even worse for immigrant doctors who are retraining.
And then you have to actually do the residency.
A natural question is…why do you want to live in and practice medicine in the U.S.? Why not in Sweden or another European Union country?