Quote: (01-01-2013 11:42 PM)the chef Wrote:
what do you guys think about doctors?
In the English speaking world, almost every country is slamming the doors shut against foreign doctors. The countries with the worst doctor shortages especially. The medical regulatory authorities are generally made up of doctors, and they can manipulate supply and demand - in the presence of a doctor shortage but with a weak economy, there are barriers put up to maintain the doctor shortage in the face of rising demand, which keeps doctor salaries up. The incentives to keep doctors out are paradoxically greater in a country with a shortage of doctors. It's still possible to break into a foreign job market but the amount of barriers you have to jump over make the process expensive and exhausting. The people I know of who most easily entered a foreign medical service were the guys who hustled and networked and were able to arrange special exemption.
Furthermore, medical skills are not truly portable. Every community has its own disease profile and relationships with their healthcare providers, and part of being a doctor is not just being familiar with the diseases in your community but having good relationships with the various specialists and health care providers that you will need to pull in to provide healthcare for your patient. Quite often in medicine it's not what you know but who you know.
Lastly, unless you've hustled special exemption, countries will attempt to dump you in rural areas where you are not competition for the local docs. You are tied down to a shithole.
To be truly international as a doctor, you would need to develop skills that do not need to go through licencing procedures. Examples would be: international evacuation medicine (international SOS is the company you'd target), pharmaceutical medical advisor (I met someone working for Novartis in this capacity, spends most of her time flying around the world), academic, researcher (this requires networking with a sponser at your target institution).
In my opinion, the US medical degree takes too long and is too expensive (4 years undergrad + 4 years postgrad + internship + residency; compared to my medical degree which was 6 years undergrad + 2 years intership + 1 year national service to become a generalist doc). You can't enjoy world travel if you are in debt, and believe me, watching other people graduate and earning money long before makes you feel like an idiot. Unless you strike a sweet speciality (which will often involve you working like a slave tied down to your practice) the money will not be great (and if the money is great, chances are the lifestyle will be awful).
Doing well in terms of lifestyle and money on a medical degree requires far more careerhacking than its worth. There are easier ways to be successful.