Sorry for the long title - but the Texas board is receiving conflicting information as to whether or not graduates of Saba can actually practice on the island, in the Netherlands Antilles or in the Netherlands - anyone really really know and do you have current documentation?

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Denise Meyer
Manager, Physician Licensure
Texas State Board of Medical Examiners

This forum typically only has unofficial information/speculation. Given your position, you may want to contact 1) the school administration on the island and 2) the proper government authorities (not sure whom) of Netherlands Antilles that grant licensure to practice.

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Be sure to come back and let everyone know! It's nice to know these things, even if they don't always apply to you .

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"The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of the world is not 'to have and to hold' but 'to give and to serve." - Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell

Contacts have been made but no one is saying if the school is still a recognized degree granting entity in the NA or if Saba grads can practice in Saba - everyone is so quiet.

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Denise Meyer
Manager, Physician Licensure
Texas State Board of Medical Examiners

I am sure Saba University School of Medicine just wants to make sure you get the full, legally correct information. It may be they prefer to communicate formally in writing, with clearance from legal council on this issue that is so important to so many students, like me. I'm a native Texan, but I ranked UTSW and Texas A&M Scott and White residency programs lower than Arizona, Kansas, and other regional programs on my rank-order list in the Match because the programs could not tell me what the Texas Medical Board would do when I applied for a license as a Saba graduate, though they seemed amenable to the process.

We're all students, prospective students, alumni, and the occassional professor here, not school administrative officials, so like the person above said, all we can do is tell you what school administration have told us. My understanding, as a soon-to-be-graduated student this May, is that we can practice in the Netherlands-Antilles if we go through the appropriate licensing procedures.

Obviously most students at Saba are U.S. citizens or Canadians who have come to Saba because of the lack of sufficient numbers of available seats in in North America, and for the most part, we are interested in going back home to our families and communities to serve. As a result, I do not know any one personally who has bothered to apply for licensure in the Netherlands-Antilles or the Netherlands, but then my perspective is limited as a student.

As a note of interest, one of my wonderful classmates is a citizen of the Netherlands-Antilles, but I think even that person has chosen to practice in the U.S., as that person married a U.S. citizen. Saba does offer scholarships to qualified citizens of the Netherlands-Antilles, so the school does endeavor to enhance the educational opporunties in the area.

I sincerely hope that the Texas Medical Board is able to talk about these things with SUSM administrative staff and arrange a site visit to the Saba University island campus in the near future. I am confident that they will find that Saba is substantially equivalent to a Texas medical school in the education of physicians. I say this because the state of California completed a visit and investigation just a couple of years ago and posted a glowing report of Saba on their website, and the school has only improved since then.

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PGY-1 Psychiatry

It is difficult to say if the graduate can get a license due to the BIG act. If the Dutch government begins to consolidate NA into their country, then I have no doubt the answer would be no and Saba will have to directly change their education system to accommodate all the respective EU and Dutch requirements.

It is probably a good idea to just directly contact the government of the island of Saba and they will get back to you in about 4-6 weeks.