biologyman,

It is an undeniable fact that US experience is an advantage.

Why do people chose UK/Ireland for their core rotation then? Here I am listing some of the possible reasons:

- Able to complete core rotations in one hospital
- Up to now they don't require a passing step 1 score, which is appealing to those who don't feel ready for the exam, those who failed the exam and don't want to retake it right away, and those who don't want to waste time while waiting for their exam score.
- Living and traveling in Europe!!
- Less working time in the hospital in general
- The advantage of working under a social healthcare system which is in many ways different from the US system
- An unique experience that makes you a bit different from the rest of the residency applicants

I agree that Caribbean medical schools offers US clerkships that are proven to be very difficult to get for students from other oversea schools. One of the main reason for this is the fact that most of the caribbean med school students are US citizens/permanent residents which makes the process simplier. The other reason is that quite a number of US hospitals have an established history of taking these students so they know what to expect. Therefore one should take the advantage and do at least some trainings in the US. Some hospitals recommend/require 6 months of US training, and I think this is a good idea. You are applying to a program in the US, afterall, so some exposure to the US system is obviously beneficial.

At the end of the day it's up to the students to decide where they want to go for the rotations. If your mind is set on staying in the US for all rotations then you can certainly do it in AUC or other schools. I haven't started my residency application process yet so I can't tell you if going to England for rotations has any disadvantage, but I have yet to hear from anyone who's having any problem. With AUC's approval by the NY Board of Education, there will be more choices of US hospitals and this will certainly be appealing to those who wish to do all of their clinical trainings in the US.

I guess the take home message is: Don't let US clerkships affect your decision to AUC. The difference between AUC and Ross regarding US clerkship is smaller than you would think.

tz

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I respectfully disagree with that. Although I did do all of my clerkships in the US, it imparted no distinct advantage to me. Each and every hospital has a slightly different system of doing things, and you have to learn the system wherever you go. You really don't come to appreciate the differences between the 2 systems until you are an intern. G

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I may be a jerk, but I'm a Jedi jerk like my father.

Some say I look like Buzz Lightyear....
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DISCLAIMER: I have no financial stake in ValueMD, or any medical school.

Funny thing is Texas Medical board is so busy HARRASSING honest upstanding physicians that want to get their license, they have little or no time to actually run the quacks out of the state.
I heard on some news program the other day that apparently, texas has the highest number of practicing physicians that lost a license in another state.
here are some cool references about that crappy board.....( oh, yeah, I did get a texas medical license a year and a half ago. It only took a little over a year

FAILURES AT TEXAS STATE BOARD OF MEDICAL EXAMINERS

The Texas State Board of Medical Examiners is the state agency responsible for the licensure and discipline of Texas physicians. The Board's mission is to protect the public's health, safety, and welfare by regulating the practice of medicine and ensuring quality health care for the citizens of Texas.

Recent news articles documenting the Board's inability and apparent unwillingness to investigate and discipline doctors show the Board is not meeting its mission to protect the public. In order to complete its mission, the Board should be more accountable to the public than the professions they license.

Board Failure to Investigate
"Other types of cases-some involving serious medical errors-have suffered, too. Hundreds of files have been lost, abandoned or left unexamined in the medical board's procedural bureaucracy over the last five years." (Harder line taken on doctors' abuse, The Dallas Morning News, 09-03-02)

"[The Board] has not revoked a single doctor's license in five years for committing serious, often fatal, medical errors. And it ranks in the bottom third of all states for its rate of license revocations, surrenders and suspensions. Also, since January, it has failed to investigate the deaths of more than 1,000 patients whose cases resulted in malpractice claims against their physicians. Thousands more may have been ignored over the last decade." ("Harder line taken on doctors' abuse," The Dallas Morning News, 09-03-02)

"The Texas State Board of Medical Examiners, the agency that pledges to protect the public, has shown routine mercy to doctors whose negligence killed the people they were treating. It has granted second and third chances to surgeons who were thrown out of hospitals because they botched operations. It has forgiven physicians who overlooked cancerous tumors, who maimed infants or whose mistakes left women sterilized. It has refused, in the last five years, to revoke the license of a single doctor for committing medical errors, a Dallas Morning News analysis of board records has found." ("Patients' deaths haven't moved state board to act," The Dallas Morning News, 07-28-02)

"With the Texas board, you get at least one dead patient," said Dallas medical malpractice lawyer Les Weisbrod. "You've got to kill two or three before they do anything to you." ("Patients' deaths haven't moved state board to act," The Dallas Morning News, 07-28-02)

"In 1998, agency figures show, more than 4,500 malpractice claims or suits were filed against Texas doctors. About 750 of those resulted in payments to patients, with an average of $344,000 per case. The state board investigated only 121 of the 4,500. And it began actual disciplinary proceedings against only three of those physicians." ("Patients' deaths haven't moved state board to act," The Dallas Morning News, 07-28-02)

"The board reported that it had reviewed 6,038 malpractice claims that had been entered into its database from January 2001 to May 2002. Not one of those cases had been investigated, the agency revealed. And, it said, 1,068 of them involved patient death. The board had disclosed in other records that it did not investigate 46,276 malpractice claims or suits reported to it from 1991 to 2000. Roughly 18 percent of all malpractice cases not investigated by the board since January 2001 involved patient death. If the same percentage applies across the years, the state board has neglected to investigate more than 9,000 malpractice cases involving patient death since 1991." ("Patients' deaths haven't moved state board to act," The Dallas Morning News, 07-28-02)

Leniency of Board punishment

"A Houston doctor sentenced in a murder-for-hire plot earlier this year is continuing to practice medicine while state regulators fight to revoke his license." ("Doctor still at work," Houston Chronicle, 12-06-02)

"Dr. Ware, of Corpus Christi, admitted to "boundary violations, sometimes including sexual relations" with at least 16 patients. In 1998, the board allowed him to remain in practice as long as he had a chaperone when he examined female patients." (Harder line taken on doctors' abuse, The Dallas Morning News, 09-03-02)

4 - Number of suits settled by Dr. Jasbir Ahluwlia for injuries inflicted on patients, including brain damage to a baby during delivery, perforating two uteruses and stitching closed a woman's ureter.

50 - Number of hours of continuing medical education the State Board of Medical Examiners required Dr. Ahluwlia to take and the full extent of the state sanction against him.


"Too little discipline is still being done. 2,696 total serious disciplinary actions a year…is a pittance compared to the volume of injury and death of patients cause by negligence of doctors…[T]he nation's system for protecting the public from medical incompetence and malfeasance is still far from adequate."

"Most states have a long way to go before they even begin to offer serious protection for citizens from doctors who are incompetent, who sexually abuse patients or who otherwise have serious problems that interfere with delivery of high-quality medical care in a compassionate way."

"It is likely, if not certain, that patients are being injured or killed more often in states with poor doctor disciplinary records than in states with consistent top 10 performances."

48th - Texas's ranking of serious doctor disciplinary actions by state medical licensing boards.

2.54 - Serious actions per 1000 doctors taken by Texas State Board of Medical Examiners.



I would pay less attention to a premed advisor, than to graduates that have ACTUALLY applied for and been awarded licensure. reading about getting a license, and actually getting one....applying for, interviewing for,getting the rediculous fingerprint card, taking the stupid texas Jurisprudence exam ( required for licensure) are all a great big hassle. What angered me, was after going through all that total harrassment, finding out all the quacks that they let into the state, and all the quacks they fail to weed out!!

PS: Hook 'em

BOOMER SOONER!

Sorry, man, I just couldn't help it!

Good luck to ALL in the Big Twelve this year!

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bleh

I was referring to the advantage of a student who has US experience over someone who does not have any US experience (e.g., those from other oversea schools that have a hard time getting US training). I do agree with you that among students who did all their clerkships in the US and those who did some in England there's not much difference. In fact, those who did all their clerkships in the US wouldn't have the opportunity to experience the British social healthcare system which I believe it's quite valuable indeed.

tz

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[color=red]I would pay less attention to a premed advisor, than to graduates that have ACTUALLY applied for and been awarded licensure.



agree with that 100% if i had listened to my hight school advisor i would have been a mechanic instead of graduating as an architect and if i would have listened to my college advisor i would be in the masters of biology program to be a high school teacher! those people don't know you, the process, or how much ambition you have to reach your goal.

listen to people who have done it. good luck at ross residents say it is a great school just be ready for the 'living conditions'.

pecae

My advisor said I'd never be a doctor. I wonder if I really am? G

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AUC Class of '99
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I may be a jerk, but I'm a Jedi jerk like my father.

Some say I look like Buzz Lightyear....
(They're right)

DISCLAIMER: I have no financial stake in ValueMD, or any medical school.

Im gonna say this and bow out of the thread.

All advisors are not created equally.

My first advisor/dead at my first undergrad told me to drop out of the college (a top 30 univeristy ) and enroll in a community college. This is before I even had grades to warrent that kind of advise. She later threatened my friend that she would do everything in her power to keep him out of med school because she thought he would be a horrible doctor and wouldn't be able the academic load of med school. He went around her and got into Downstate medical school Top of his class and got a 245 on his Step I. I can tell more stories, but its pointless.

The man who I trust is the man who has helped from day 1. He's helped me believe in myself and helped show me what areas I needed to improve on along the way. He's been with me every step of the way and the fact that I have gained acceptances to both Ross and AUC and interviews at PCOM, LECOM, TUCOM and SGU only shows the effort he's put into me. I could not be where I am today without his aid and advice. I owe a lot to him.
His qualifications are amazing. He's been involved with various medical schools for over 40 years. He's been in charge of setting up one of the medical schools in Texas and before that he was the dean of another texas medical school. He's been on both sides of this process and I believe he knows what he's talking about when it comes to this subject.
He is no ordinary advisor.

A lot of people have reservations about going overseas for a medical education. And while the Internet is a tool to get information, I think advice is best left to those around you in your life. For me it has been my father, who is a foreign medical graduate himself and my premed advisor.


While I appreciate the fact that you are trying to stick up for your school and dispell (sp?) some rumors for other hopeful applications, this thread has quickly become fairly negative in its tone.

Thank you for the information you have provided me and other applicants with, but I am now comfortable with which schools I would like to attend.

You should be comfortable with your decision, as it is a sound one. No one should try to sway you toward another school. Just trying to set the record straight for others who may read the thread. I think we are obligated to make the information on these forums as accurate as possible. Agan, Bevo, good luck at Ross. G

__________________
AUC Class of '99
Bored certified
I may be a jerk, but I'm a Jedi jerk like my father.

Some say I look like Buzz Lightyear....
(They're right)

DISCLAIMER: I have no financial stake in ValueMD, or any medical school.

bevo,

No one is trying to dissuade you from going to Ross. What do we have to gain to get you to pick AUC? Afterall, if you don't feel comfortable with one school there's no reason why you should choose that school - it's YOUR OWN decision. What we have done though is to try to straighten out some of the nasty rumors about AUC that have been circulating around. I believe for the most part of this thread the tone has been very neutral. When you start your medical school life in Ross you'll see what true "rumors" really mean. You'll see people around you differently - just take my words and you'll see

Good luck with your study in Dominica!

By the way the big news for Ross today has been the acquisition of the school by DeVry, Inc. I don't know how it'll affect the school; Ross has been very active on trying to set up legitimate links with the States and it looks like this will be an important step.

tz

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