I have been following opm for a relatively long time and soon hoping to start taking the pre requisite courses. I have found almost all of the answers about the points I wasn’t clear about at Old premeds. My brother’s situation is may be a bit rarer or at least one of those topics that hasn’t been discussed here before therefore I thought I should post here.
He obtained his MD degree and completed surgery residency at a non US institution and worked as an associate professor for 5 years then he moved to US, completed the USMLEs and worked at various researches related to microsurgery and transplantation in US and applied to match but didn’t get matched to a surgery residency. A year later he did find a preliminary position in surgery and completed the first year however there wasn’t an open spot in the second year therefore he couldn’t start the second year. He is very passionate about transplantation and he received admission to a transplantation fellowship program in US and completed the fellowship, however he didn’t complete his residency at a US institution and he is not board certified and this is a big hurdle in finding a position in transplantation.
He is a naturalized US citizen and he is more than willing to start from scratch and complete a residency. Since he graduated from medical school over 10 years ago and doesn’t have stellar step 1 score on paper he doesn’t seem to have a great chance at surgery residency programs. He is considering the family medicine route and so far the responses he received do not provide any hope of light. The most frequent response he gets is that “we are looking for candidates who graduated at most 4 years ago and you do not fit our criteria†At this point what options does he have, in my opinion it is such a waste of talent, a very capable transplant surgeon staying idle.
Hi,
I think he should persevere. He has more than many people I know (research, preliminary,…). I know the problem here is the graduation date but I heard that there are some nice programs out there. Check out www.usmleforum.com, there are some sucess stories, and goud info there. Many international medical graduates share their experiences there. I Hope it helps.
you right brenda7