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Comment by giarc | Hacker News Reader

This isn't related to OP questions but moreso to your situation. I work in a hospital and I was talking to an occupational health safety advisor (probably makes CAD $80k/yr). He told me he was an ED physician in his home country of Colombia for 25 years. He can't practice here in Canada without going through full training again. He would make $300k/yr or more if he was able to practice. I asked him what was different about Colombia and Canada in EDs, he said basically we have better access to imaging (CT, MRI etc). It's really crazy to me that we make it so difficult for overseas physicians to practice here.

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Nurses too. But it's a bit more of a nuanced problem. The nursing exam in the U.S. is called the NCLEX. American nursing school grads pass this test at a rate of 90%. International candidates pass at a rate of 36%. Are the international nurses that bad? No, they are not acclimated to the cultural milieu that is unwritten in every question (including English vocabulary of course).

That's one of those typical US healthcare problems you think you're so great for. For example in Europe, medical professionals are free to seek work in any member country [0]. Although definitely not perfect due to "EU membership", it's still pretty valuable (and logical, common sense, etc) when we're talking about healthcare providers. Also note, that while a lot or most of European nurses will of course speak English, only 2 of the member countries are English natives, yet that's still doesn't seem to be that much of an issue. The entire US healthcare system is just basically a capitalistic shitshow which everybody in the planet knows except for most of you guys apparently.

[0] http://www.euro.who.int/en/about-us/partners/observatory/pub...

Not just USA, even it's difficult to practice as a doctor in UK and Australia.

I also don't understand the difference between two doctors coming from two countries. The underlying principles are the same and the science behind it is the same.

We also read the UK textbooks at universities. I feel it just sucks to be a doctor. I would not recommend anyone to take this route.

Back in the day before I got to know these things I used to tell my mom who is a lawyer that it would be difficult to be a lawyer in another country because the laws are different.

But I guess it's just same for doctors insanely difficult even though most of the things are the same

As a doctor in a third-world country, do you have any needs that could be solved by a simple web app? I'd be happy to build it if it could be of use to you and you can sell it to local medical practices.

This is an idea that I think of everyday but I can't find an answer because of these reasons

Most doctors have a very poor IT knowledge. Most of them know only to use Facebook

Most patients are elderly people, or people with extrame poverty. They either don't have the knowledge facilities or the money to pay for such a services.

Most of the work in hospital are still done by painful paper work. But making hospitals computerize has failed.

I work in a hospital and I can say that COVID has pushed the transition to telemedicine like nothing else could. Many clinics were forced to see their patients over telemedicine and are realizing it worked. Prior to COVID physicians would have never agreed to it, but COVID forced this expeirement. The thing that needs to catch up is the fee guidelines that allow physicians to charge for telemedicine visits. It often isn't outlined properly so physicians are hesitant to transition when they fear an audit will result in a big headache.

Pre COIVID I knew a lot of physicians who would have loved to provide telemedicine. The problem was insurance wouldn’t pay for it (in the US). Now I the state where I live is it temporarily mandated by the governor that insurance must pay for it. Hopefully this becomes permanent.

> Most of the work in hospital are still done by painful paper work.

Sounds like there is something simple I could build.

> But making hospitals computerize has failed.

Can you figure out why?

Sorry but please: Colombia, not Columbia. (And to the comment, yes I've seen this kind of situation in Canada).

Sorry, used to writing British Columbia. Will edit.

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