We must not pit immigration policy and health care needs against one another. We need better policy on immigration, and that policy should confront immigration at the workplace and at the border—not in the hospital emergency room.
There are “push” factors such as poor working conditions, substandard facilities, unsafe conditions, and low income that discourage health professionals trained in Indian medical schools from staying in country.
Abraar Karan, MD, Daniel DeUgarte, MD, and Michele Barry, MD
Responsibility for physician “brain drain” can be attributed to the resource-poor countries that lose talent, the wealthy recruiting countries, and individuals.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(7):665-675. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.7.ecas1-1607.
Dr Rajesh R. Tampi joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Drs Aarti Gupta and Iqbal Ahmed: “Why Does the US Overly Rely on International Medical Graduates in Its Geriatric Psychiatric Workforce?”
An undercurrent in all debates about allocation of health care resources to the poor is the matter of access to and coverage of health care for immigrants, particularly low-income and undocumented ones.
The NRMP’s new “all-in” policy requires every residency program to fill every first-year position either exclusively through the match or outside of it. Programs that continue to offer prematches will operate outside the match.