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Natives as international medical graduates: A nationwide analysis in Taiwan
Author(s) -
Chu FengYuan,
Chao YinMei,
Chou LiFang,
Chen TzengJi
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the international journal of health planning and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1099-1751
pISSN - 0749-6753
DOI - 10.1002/hpm.2647
Subject(s) - economic shortage , immigration , family medicine , medicine , political science , medical education , economic growth , law , linguistics , philosophy , government (linguistics) , economics
Summary Introduction International medical graduates (IMGs) play an important role in many Western countries because of globalization and physician shortages. While the IMGs investigated in most studies were immigrants, few studies have considered the situation in which people native to a given country have studied medicine abroad and then returned to practice in their home country. To illustrate that situation, our study aimed to investigate practicing IMGs in Taiwan by comparing practicing physicians' nationalities to the countries in which the medical schools the IMGs graduated from are located. Methods Data were obtained from the annual official statistics released by the Taiwan Medical Association from 1998 to 2017. Results The number of practicing IMGs in Taiwan increased from 834 (3.1% of 26,991 physicians) in 1998 to 1,733 (3.7% of 46,452) in 2017. Their medical schools were distributed across 37 countries, with graduates of schools in the Philippines ( n = 550), Poland ( n = 420), and Myanmar ( n = 364) accounting for 77.0% of all practicing IMGs in 2017. However, only 29, 0, and 253 physicians were themselves Filipinos, Polish, and Myanmarese, respectively. Conclusion Most of the practicing IMGs in Taiwan are native Taiwanese. The real impact of IMGs in health policy‐making and the existing quota system of admissions to medical schools thus deserve further investigations.