Residency Ready Physicians

We are citizens/permanent residents of the United States of America. We earned our medical degree (MD) from overseas, We passed all the medical licensing exams, United States Medical Licensing Exams (USMLE) then We earned the Educational Commission of Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) certificate which gives us the complete right to start residency training in the USA.

Thousands of well-qualified US citizens/permanent residents both American medical graduates and foreign medical graduates are facing a serious problem securing a residency positions during the match process every year while thousands of the non-citizen/non-permanent resident foreign medical graduates could secure these positions.

This number of unemployed US citizens/permanent residents physicians is increasing year after year and this is creating a problem for these physicians by putting a barrier between them and their rights as a US citizens/permanent residents to purse a job related to their field of expertise so this puts them in a financial stress of being unemployed and emotional stress of feeling useless toward their own community and toward the future generations for which they are responsible.

If this problem continues without any urgent and practical interference these unemployed physicians may seek practicing medicine without a license, as this is their only field of expertise and this will reflect negatively on the community and on the health care system of the USA, which we perceive as always being on top. This prompts us to address this problem to the authorities so we can find practical solutions to this demanding situation.

We have some practical suggestions that we believe are applicable for the upcoming match process. These suggestions will not prevent the foreign physicians from having their complete rights to pursue a medical career in the United States with the same level of training and respect like the US citizens/permanent resident physicians. The purpose of these suggestions is to solve the problem of the unemployed US citizens/permanent resident physicians.

Our suggestions are summarized in the following:

As there are an increasing number of American medical graduates and foreign medical graduates who seek residency training in the USA we hope that the authorities could take the following suggestions in consideration:

I-An immediate solution for the problem can be done by putting the match process under some control of the work-force authorities* of the USA then we suggest dividing the Residency Match process into two stages:
-First Stage: at this stage only eligible citizens and permanent resident applicants will be permitted to apply for the match of the current academic year, during this stage work-force authorities will make the necessary arrangements with the individual residency program to give interviews to the maximum number of the eligible applicants according to their selection criteria.
-Second Stage: This stage started after the completion of the match. In this stage Applicants apply to the unfilled spots after the match, all eligible unmatched US citizens/permanent resident applicants and eligible foreign applicants will be permitted to apply to the unfilled residency spots. This stage should be identical to the first stage regarding the selection criteria and the interview process.

*The work-force authorities will be needed in the match to make sure that there is no more accumulation of unmatched US Citizens/permanent residents applicants in the upcoming years to avoid creating a serious problem like what we are facing now.
 
We expect this solution to enable all these well-qualified US Citizens/permanent residents unemployed physicians to be involved in the residency training programs and it will select the best of the well-qualified foreign physicians whom we still need to keep the excellent standards of our health care system.

II- The second solution aims at creating timely residency spot openings so that all applicants will find their suitable match for a respectful training program.

What we hope for is that you would consider our problem seriously as we mentioned before it puts hundreds of families which are supposed to raise the standard of life in their communities under sever financial, social and emotional stress.

On a final note we would like to clarify that we are all competent physicians. We are all certified by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG). We have devoted our time, passion, and lives to this profession so we have no other experiences which enable us to work in any other field in the US or elsewhere.