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Healthcare sector is one of the major pillars in the development of any nation. Many countries in our area, especially the GCC, are currently embracing ambitious long-term plans aiming to become centres of excellence in healthcare and major regional hubs for medical tourism. These countries certainly have excellent medical infrastructure such as modern medical facilities and medical technology to achieve these goals. However, many are still relying mainly on foreign doctors to run their healthcare facilities. Unfortunately, many of the foreign doctors come with short-term “personal” plans to return to their home countries after a certain period of time, leaving behind a vacuum that is to be refilled by yet another cohort of foreign doctors, and the cycle is repeated. Accordingly, without qualified, home-grown and well-trained national doctors, the ultimate goal of these countries cannot be fully realized.
Certainly, there are many ambitious young national doctors who have the potential and the desire to pursue their postgraduate training in western countries, such as USA or Europe, to specialize and come back to their home countries as high calibre specialists, consultants and healthcare leaders. Unfortunately, however, many of these young doctors cannot pass certain western examinations required to join postgraduate programs of their choice. Personally, I don’t think that failing to pass such examinations is because our students are not competent, but rather because the lack of good preparatory courses by experienced teachers and mentors to guide them on how to handle and pass such examinations. This issue was in fact behind the decision to offer my USMLE courses to prepare our students and junior doctors for this task.
Dr Khalil Baroud, MD, MS (AM/PM/PH), ABIM, FACP