Every year over half a million open-heart surgeries are performed in the U.S. Many are being done by foreign-born surgeons, physicians whose accents may have prevented them from flawlessly explaining the procedure to their patients.
I was one of their patients. Recently I underwent a cardiac catheterization by Dr. N. Mathew Koshy, an Indian-educated cardiologist. The results were alarming, and in the early morning hours, Dr. Atiq Rehman, a Pakistani-educated surgeon, recommended emergency triple coronary-artery bypass graft surgery. My physician son spoke on the phone with Dr. Rehman and consented to the surgery on my behalf, but there had been no time to verify the surgeon’s expertise.
Are patients putting their lives at risk when they turn to foreign-educated doctors? On the contrary, a Pennsylvania study of 244,000 hospitalizations found a lower mortality rate for patients of foreign-educated physicians compared to those of U.S.-educated physicians.
Why this counter-intuitive result? Perhaps because only the best foreign-educated physicians succeed at the rigorous examination and application process required for them to come to the United States, and then they usually get further training at U.S. hospitals. A case could be made that receiving care from foreign-educated doctors may be the most prudent course of action. For example, we later learned that my surgeon had graduated with honors from Aga Khan University School of Medicine in Pakistan and had done subsequent surgery training at four major U.S. hospitals.
Faced with a crisis, I had no other choice, and I am thankful that the choice I had was a top-notch surgeon.
A lot has been said about the country being flooded by immigrants. Not enough has been said about how the flood includes highly skilled immigrants who are saving American lives.
1 comment:
Dear Sir,
First of all as an immigrant physician I was flattered to read this blog. More importantly it embodies "the State of Affairs of ANY IMMIGRANT in any walk of life in a foreign land". It is the basic survival instinct which leads to outperformance of others. And it also stems from the feeling of extreme appreciation of attainment and not taking anything for granted or the sense of entitlement.
My best regards and again appreciate the blog.
Atiq Rehman, MD (www.leadershipnhealthcare.blogspot.com)(www.facebook.com/leadershipnhealthcare)(www.facebook.com/roboticheartsurgery1)
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