State medical boards/foreign country lists of approved or disapproved schools and approved for clinicals
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HOW TO CHECK TO SEE IF A SCHOOL IS RECOGNIZED BY ITS HOME COUNTRY:
WHO list of recognized medical schools by country
http://www.who.int/hrh/wdms/en/index.html
FAIMER/IMED list of medical schools by region/country
http://imed.ecfmg.org/search.asp
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LIST OF STATE/COUNTRY MEDICAL BOARDs that approve or disapprove medical
schools and list them
Texas approved list (you don't have to supply additional documents for these schools)
http://www.tmb.state.tx.us/professionals/physicians/applicants/STDNHPSE.rtf
Kansas approved list
KSBHA -
North Dakota Disapproved list
http://www.ndbomex.com/DisapprovedMedSchools.pdf
California list of approved schools
Welcome to the Medical Board of California - Medical Schools Recognized by the Medical Board of California
California list of disapproved schools
http://www.medbd.ca.gov/applicant/sc...napproved.html
Indiana list of disapproved medical schools
http://www.in.gov/pla/bandc /mlbi/instinfo.html
Alabama list of schools that require additional documentation
http://www.albme.org/Default.aspx?Page=PysicianApplication
Oregon List of disapproved schools (some medical in list)
http://www.ossc.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html
Michigan list of disapproved schools (some medical in list)
www.michigan.gov/documents/Non-accreditedSchools_78090_7.pdf

Singapore list of approved foreign medical schools
http://www.getforme.com/previous2003...andMS_more.htm

UK list of unacceptable medical qualifications
http://www.gmc-uk.org/education/unde...uate_level.asp

Malaysia list of approved offshore medical schools
http://www.mma.org.my/info/recognised_colleges.htm

US Dept of Ed approved accreditation agencies
http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/ncfmea.html
Pakistan list of medical schools with deficiencies
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_25-11-2003_pg7_36
Mexican agency that approves medical schools and maintains a list
http://www.comaem.org.mx/
UK article on medical education with data on some schools status in terms of recognition
http://www.gmc-uk.org/education/undergraduate/studying _medicine_at_undergraduate_level.asp
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LIST OF APPROVED SCHOOLS FOR CLINICALS:
Florida Commission on Independent Education which approves offshore medical schools to do clinicals in Florida
http://www.firn.edu/doe/cie/
NY list of schools qualified to do more than 12 weeks of clinical training
http://www.op.nysed.gov/medforms.htm

LIST OF OFFSHORE MEDICAL REGULATORY AGENCIES
IAMRA

GMC List of regulatory agencies to check validity of medical schools
http://webcache.gmc-uk.org/cgs/cgsIndex.jsp

__________________
Moderator - State Licensing Forum

Still skeptical after all these years.
This is it. There are no hidden meanings.WYSIWYG

http://www.internetmedicalschool.homestead.com

http://www.chiropractormds.homestead.com/index.html

Thanks for making list.

__________________
God Bless You.

H. MD

I will be recieving my MD degree when I am 454 yrs old. Do i have a chance of getting aresidency? Thanks everyone for the help

Azskeptic,
What is your reasearch on the validity of the Oceania University of Medicine located in Samoa? Apparently, they offer a mixture of on campus and online studies that supposedly lead to licensure in Samoa and perhaps the USA??? The tuition looks very steep (96,000 USD) Wow! Apparently, there a lot of US students enrolling with the hopes of obtaining US licensure. I sure hope they aren't wasting their time and $$$$.
Thanks in advance for the reply,
Leadsled

Ben Casey,
If you live to be 454 y.o... anything is possible!

lots of questions as it relates to articles I've seen

see

http://abc.net.au/ra/pacbeat/stories/s1302313.htm

also

http://www.amc.org.au/

and

http://www.alp.org.au/media/0205/msedu090.php

__________________
Moderator - State Licensing Forum

Still skeptical after all these years.
This is it. There are no hidden meanings.WYSIWYG

http://www.internetmedicalschool.homestead.com

http://www.chiropractormds.homestead.com/index.html

In the interest of fair journalism and presenting the whole picture here is a site also to review. I am sure Skeptic has not run across it as I am sure he would have presented it.

http://www.samoaobserver.ws/news/opi.../1105op005.htm

There is lots of stuff out there indeed. Bottom line: why would you go to this school?

__________________
Moderator - State Licensing Forum

Still skeptical after all these years.
This is it. There are no hidden meanings.WYSIWYG

http://www.internetmedicalschool.homestead.com

http://www.chiropractormds.homestead.com/index.html

I suppose only the students who go there can answer that. I suppose you could ask that of a number of schools that are out there, yet keep their heads afloat.

I am a current student at Oceania University of Medicine, and I can tell you my reasons for going there, as well as the reasons for other students I know.

Most of the students I know (including myself) who attend OUM are already medical professionals. I know a Chiropractor, a charge nurse, a neurosurgical technician, a paramedic (who I might add has passed part 1 of the USMLE- passed well, and is now doing rotations), and myself, a molecular biologist working in research. Most chose OUM because they wish to take their educations a step further and become physicians, but want to be able to continue working while completing their pre-clinical course work. The OUM program allows us to do that. As you can already see, many of our current careers already complement our medical educations. The OUM program allows us to extend our education up to 6 years out in order to accommodate our schedules.

My reasons for choosing OUM are somewhat different, although it is nice to be able to continue my work in research while I am studying. I find that I tend to do better if I'm kept busy. I have less chance for distraction. However, my main reason for attending the program is due to an illness I had during my undergraduate studies. I was already pre-med, but when I got sick, I was told that chances were that I would not recover. At that point, all I had left that was normal was school, and so I stayed in school. 4 months in hospitals in one year, however, tends to have negative consequences on the GPA. I recovered, but I could not get into a US school. I worked in research for several years, and when I took the MCAT, I did reasonably well. I was accepted into several international programs, but did not yet have enough confidence in my health to subject myself to several years in a third world country. OUM was appealing because it did not require me to be away for more than a couple of months. I, too, was skeptical about the program, and must have driven the administration batty with all of my questions. Eventually, however, I was convinced, and I ended up starting my medical education in Samoa.

I have not regretted it. This IS NOT an online education. Yes, we receive our case studies and homework assignments online, but we use many of the same textbooks as are used in the best universities for our required assignments, including Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease, Guyten and Hall's Medical Physiology, Davidson's Principals and Practice of Medicine, and Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine. My entire library of REQUIRED medical texts for my course work currently consists of 52 textbooks and is growing every term. We are also required to read current research related to the cases we study and submit reports on what we've learned from those readings every week. We are required to meet several times a week with approved local physician mentors who are board certified in a specialty field to cover our weekly course materials, AND to shadow them when seeing patients to gain some real life clinical experience. Our exams are in written format. I have taken USMLE practice exams, and our term exams are very similar to the USMLE in difficulty- sometimes even more difficult. The final course in the pre-clinical courses is a Kaplan review for the USMLE part 1. Then we start our rotations. At this point, our clinical education is identical to that of any other medical student. We do the same rotations as any other medical student, in many of the same hospitals, as do students from other foreign programs such as Ross and St. Georges Universities.

Students are now given the option of attending their foundation blocks in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, or Samoa. I truly recommend taking the Samoa foundation block. You'll get a lot more experience. You start every morning doing hospital rounds, where you are thrown in with older medical students doing electives from their medical programs in Australia, UK, Germany and other European medical schools. You will be expected to participate in a fashion similar to these older students, although your level will be accommodated with additional teaching. When I was there, I was permitted to review charts, submit diagnoses and orders (countersigned by an attending, of course), do prenatal exams, and by my 5th week I even scrubbed in and assisted in surgery. A number of OUM students ended up with babies named for them (one I delivered has a middle name for me), as it is Samoan tradition to name a child for the person who delivers it. I believe one student ended up with 4 babies in Samoa named "Sam" after him. Surgeries I participated in included a lumpectomy, a caesarean, and a partial gastrectomy (for severe peptic ulcer disease). You will also get to see more unusual diagnoses (unusual in 1st world countries), such as tuberculosis, typhoid fever and rheumatic fever (and rheumatic heart disease).

There you have it... an account from an OUM student. I have been in the program for nearly 2 years. I do not regret it. Moreover, at work, many of the physicians I work with at National Jewish are at the top of their field, and they have come to approve of the program whole heartedly as they have seen me progress in both my work and my education.

Main Web site for Oceania University of Medicine: http://oceaniamed.org/

Send me a PRIVATE MESSAGE if you have further questions.