The UCLA International Medical Graduate program enlists legal immigrant medical students in order to fill in healthcare access gaps throughout California. The UCLA program aimed at assisting legal immigrants in order to obtain their US board certification. Further, it will funnel more clinicians toward medically underserved regions who want for healthcare access.
UCLA Program drives healthcare access with immigrant docs
The UCLA program enrolls legal immigrants from the Latin American countries. These immigrants are the ones who have completed medical school outside of the US, Puerto Rico, or Canada. UCLA experts often call a situation ‘brain waste’, wherein these individuals struggle so as to obtain medical licensure upon immigration to the US and thus finally end up practicing or working below their education level.
Working towards reducing the issue
The UCLA program is working to reduce this issue by the enrollment of the medical school graduates in a 6 to 24-month program. This program prepares students for medical board exams and thus helps them in gaining a 3-year family medicine residency in California.
What Michelle Bholat said?
Program Executive Director (ED) and Co-Founder Michelle Bholat, MD said, ‘Of all the individuals who have graduated from our program, who could go work wherever they wanted to after meeting their requirements, 75% of them remained in the underserved communities’. Bholat added, ‘That is a remarkable statistic and is a win-win for the doctors and their patients who so desperately rely on their care’.
Jose Javier Hernandez, MD, and a program graduate
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
Jose Javier Hernandez, MD, a program graduate, has seen the benefits of UCLA program first hand. Hernandez is originally from Mexico, and is a first-year resident and currently practicing in a rural part of California.
‘The need for medical care here is overwhelming’, Hernandez said in a UCLA statement. Hernandez further added, ‘So many of my patients have avoided the doctor for years because of language and cultural barriers. Now, they know there is someone who can care for them who knows the language, knows the cultures and shares their heritage. It’s so rewarding knowing how much of a difference I am making in their lives’.
What Dan Schneider said?
Dan Schneider, one of the House bill’s co-sponsors said that these bipartisan bills aim to keep American-trained and also skilled clinicians in the country at a time where patients are continuously facing a growing clinician shortage. The United States is now expecting a 100,000 clinician shortage by 2030.
Schneider said, ‘The American medical education system attracts top international talent and produces the best-trained graduates in the world’.
Image Source: Image
Date: June 27, 2017