‘It’s tough to get out’: Caribbean Medical School Fails

[bjcheung77]

I've read this article on the NYTimes site, but because there is a paywall, I found another posting on another news site... Anyways, this article talks about how medical schools in the Caribbean fail because of the lower success rates at matching residency for off shore medical schools.  It's roughly 60% matching versus 94% match in the USA... someone in the article was lucky enough to match in Canada though!

Link: ‘It’s tough to get out’: How Caribbean medical schools fail their students (sanjuandailystar.com)

Here's another one I found on reddit, reposted about "I have a PhD in not having money".  The NYTimes article has been copied into two replies.  Basically talks about a Harvard Medical student notices the disparity between the rich/poor who attend Harvard Medical school... 

Link 1: ‘I Have a Ph.D. in Not Having Money’ : college (reddit.com)  There is another link discussing the article on reddit, with a reference to someone who committed suicide because they couldn't get into a match for residency after trying twice, died before he went for a third attempt!  Link 2: ‘I Have a Ph.D. in Not Having Money’ : GradSchool (reddit.com)

You hear stories like this one person who failed to match residency and trying to continue in a similar health related field such as Nurse Practitioner  |  Link: After failing to get into a residency, this new MD is going to nursing school (statnews.com)

[ReyMysterioso]

Wow. 60% matching is ABYSMAL and a TERRIBLE outcome for students. No wonder the schools fail.

[ashkir]

Meanwhile local hospitals to me failed to get enough matches.

[freeloader]

The American Medical Association (AMA) is a trade group that represents doctors and have a mandate to keep physician salaries high. For more than a century (yes, you read that right), they have actively worked to reduce the number of doctors in the United States and to limit the ability of others (chiropractors, nurses, APRNs [including nurse anesthetists], PAs, osteopathic physicians, and some MDs including foreign graduates and people of color) to practice medicine and have the same authority and privilege as “real” doctors.

The AMA supported the 1997 legislation which limited funding for residencies. Those limits are still in place.

The US Government is the main funder of residency training for physicians in the US. In other words, our tax dollars pay to train doctors.  The organization which allocates federal funding for residencies (essentially an extension of the AMA) allocates more money for specialist training (as opposed to general care) and has traditionally allocated more money to faculties catering to middle and upper class, white, and coastal populations.

There are plenty of solutions.  Here’s one: currently, residents don’t pay for their training and are paid a salary. Why not offer residencies where the trainee isn’t paid a salary or is paid minimum wage?  For a doctor who is already hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, that would be preferable to a worthless MD, right?  Of course it would. But not so fast!  That is a direct violation of the accrediting rules for residencies as essentially set up for—you guessed if, the AMA!

Since residencies are funded with tax dollars, why don’t we have a system where physicians who refuse to accept Medicare/Medicaid patients have to repay part (or all) of the cost of their residencies that our tax dollars paid for?  You could then use that money to invest in more residents. Yeah, legally only the military and VA can do that and only for people who violate their employment contracts. Thanks AMA!

This year, our nation will spend better than $20 billion funding residencies. Our tax dollars are being used to train the highest-earning workers in our economy. And for that, we have a doctors shortage, particularly in majority minority communities and rural areas. We have too many specialists and too few generalists. We have the most expensive healthcare system in the world but nowhere near the best.

The next time you visit a doctor’s office after waiting 6 months for an appointment and you see his Porsche in the parking lot and he talks condescendingly to your for 30 seconds and it costs you $300 AFTER your insurance has paid for the majority of his bill, remember that he is only there because of governments handouts—what I like to call welfare. You might even point out to him that you are happy that he has been able to lift himself up so well after living on government assistance for his 4 or so years of residency/welfare.

Some light reading on the subject:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/healt...ctors.html

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/thank...?_amp=true