\n<\/a><\/strong>Interestingly, although respondents received most of their cardiology training in their native countries, 59% went to the United States to complete it. However, nearly all of those who came to the U.S. said that they intend to return to their home countries eventually. That contradicts previous literature published by the University of Michigan (1995) showing that once international physicians come to the U.S. they tend to stay. However, both the age of those data and the size of our small, informal sample may be among the factors that account for the discrepancy between the two.<\/p>\nIn our survey, a plurality of respondents (45%) said they had completed 2 to 4 years of postgraduate training before starting cardiology training. With regard to general cardiology training itself, most respondents (62%) indicated that their native countries\u00a0 require 2 to 4 years, but a substantial percentage (27.5%) said that 4 to 6 years of general cardiology training are required (considerably longer than in the U.S.). Perhaps a partial explanation is that in some U.K. models of Specialist Registrar training, general-medicine training years are built in to cardiology specialty training, thereby increasing the total time logged under cardiology.<\/p>\n
About two thirds of our respondents indicated that their general cardiology programs provided training in diagnostic catheterization and echocardiogram interpretation, but a still-remarkable nearly one third said that their programs did not provide training in these modalities. Perhaps the desire to get such training explains why many trainees come to the U.S., but our data do not clarify that point.<\/p>\n
Only about half of our respondents said that their native countries required board certification to practice as a cardiologist. As in the U.S., most of these board exams are taken 2 to 4 years after starting cardiology training, although they are a combination of written and clinical examinations (not computerized tests, as in the U.S.).<\/p>\n
Work life after completing general cardiology training does not differ much between the U.S. and other countries, according to our respondents. They are, for example, permitted to perform admissions, do consultations, and read ECGs. Consistent with the finding that two thirds received training in diagnostic catheterization, 64% said they went on to do catheterizations in their practices. Interestingly, 84% of respondents describe echocardiogram interpretation as part of their practices, despite the fact that nearly 30% of all respondents said they had not received such training in their general cardiology programs. This disjuncture may be attributable, again, to having received training in the U.S. or, perhaps, to systems in their home countries that allow cardiologists to interpret echos without formal training.<\/p>\n
Subspecialty training was available in all the countries represented by our respondents, and 72% planned to undertake it. The most popular subspecialty was interventional cardiology (38% of respondents), with most of the rest roughly evenly distributed among imaging, electrophysiology, research, and heart failure. Although three quarters of respondents interested in subspecialty training intend to do most of it in their home countries, close to half of all our respondents said that they intend to come to the U.S. at some point before their overall training is complete and then to return home.<\/p>\n
A quarter of medical school graduates in the U.S. have education-related debt that exceeds $200,000, according to the Association of Medical Colleges (October 2007). In our international survey, about 80% of respondents had less than $6000 in debt accrued over the course of their training, and 43% reported having no educational debt at all.<\/p>\n
Modest though our sample was, we\u2019re wondering what your thoughts are about the data our international survey respondents shared with us. What insights do the numbers provide? Any surprises?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Earlier this year we at CardioExchange surveyed international medical school graduates from our online community. We sent out a questionnaire to 850 internationally based physicians from around the globe and received 29 responses (a 3.4% survey-response rate) from 6 continents. The largest group of respondents (19%) was from India, then 12% each from Brazil and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":280,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[195],"class_list":["post-8321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-fellowship-training-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/280"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2011\/05\/intl_survey.png\" "\\"Where")
<\/p>\n![\n<\/a><\/strong>Interestingly, although respondents received most of their cardiology training in their native countries, 59% went to the United States to complete it. However, nearly all of those who came to the U.S. said that they intend to return to their home countries eventually. That contradicts previous literature published by the University of Michigan (1995) showing that once international physicians come to the U.S. they tend to stay. However, both the age of those data and the size of our small, informal sample may be among the factors that account for the discrepancy between the two.<\/p>\nIn our survey, a plurality of respondents (45%) said they had completed 2 to 4 years of postgraduate training before starting cardiology training. With regard to general cardiology training itself, most respondents (62%) indicated that their native countries\u00a0 require 2 to 4 years, but a substantial percentage (27.5%) said that 4 to 6 years of general cardiology training are required (considerably longer than in the U.S.). Perhaps a partial explanation is that in some U.K. models of Specialist Registrar training, general-medicine training years are built in to cardiology specialty training, thereby increasing the total time logged under cardiology.<\/p>\nAbout two thirds of our respondents indicated that their general cardiology programs provided training in diagnostic catheterization and echocardiogram interpretation, but a still-remarkable nearly one third said that their programs did not provide training in these modalities. Perhaps the desire to get such training explains why many trainees come to the U.S., but our data do not clarify that point.<\/p>\nOnly about half of our respondents said that their native countries required board certification to practice as a cardiologist. As in the U.S., most of these board exams are taken 2 to 4 years after starting cardiology training, although they are a combination of written and clinical examinations (not computerized tests, as in the U.S.).<\/p>\nWork life after completing general cardiology training does not differ much between the U.S. and other countries, according to our respondents. They are, for example, permitted to perform admissions, do consultations, and read ECGs. Consistent with the finding that two thirds received training in diagnostic catheterization, 64% said they went on to do catheterizations in their practices. Interestingly, 84% of respondents describe echocardiogram interpretation as part of their practices, despite the fact that nearly 30% of all respondents said they had not received such training in their general cardiology programs. This disjuncture may be attributable, again, to having received training in the U.S. or, perhaps, to systems in their home countries that allow cardiologists to interpret echos without formal training.<\/p>\nSubspecialty training was available in all the countries represented by our respondents, and 72% planned to undertake it. The most popular subspecialty was interventional cardiology (38% of respondents), with most of the rest roughly evenly distributed among imaging, electrophysiology, research, and heart failure. Although three quarters of respondents interested in subspecialty training intend to do most of it in their home countries, close to half of all our respondents said that they intend to come to the U.S. at some point before their overall training is complete and then to return home.<\/p>\nA quarter of medical school graduates in the U.S. have education-related debt that exceeds $200,000, according to the Association of Medical Colleges (October 2007). In our international survey, about 80% of respondents had less than $6000 in debt accrued over the course of their training, and 43% reported having no educational debt at all.<\/p>\nModest though our sample was, we\u2019re wondering what your thoughts are about the data our international survey respondents shared with us. What insights do the numbers provide? Any surprises?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year we at CardioExchange surveyed international medical school graduates from our online community. We sent out a questionnaire to 850 internationally based physicians from around the globe and received 29 responses (a 3.4% survey-response rate) from 6 continents. The largest group of respondents (19%) was from India, then 12% each from Brazil and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":280,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[195],"class_list":["post-8321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-fellowship-training-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/280"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2011\/05\/FellowshipSurvey_sm.png\"){kind=link}