Originally Posted by tigerle
With the differences in health systems around the world, I doubt that you could make a meaningful regression analysis about whether the two years‘ worth of classes required by gen Ed’s or distribution requirements or core classes or non-STEM majors taken by US premed students make any difference in outcome.

Granted, the complexities are significant, but they're not insurmountable.

There are some effective methods to study within-state and within-local health authority differences in clinical outcomes that could be mapped reliably to doctor credentialing. This is already done when piloting new medical school subjects across jurisdictions and specialties to justify the new program expenditure.

Originally Posted by tigerle
However, considering that the US appears to be the only country in the world doing it this way and considering how easily health care professionals can move between systems once bureaucratic hurdles are overcome, my educated hunch would be „none whatsoever“.

Canada has a blended model.

In Quebec, lower tier med schools require a CEGEP diploma (equivalent to a 2-year college certification). Lower quality medical schools in Alberta require 2 years of undergraduate study. Upper tier Quebec and rest of Canada medical schools generally require at least a 3-year bachelor's degree, with a prescribed set of science and math course requirements as prerequisites to an MD.

Foreign MD credentials are only sparsely accepted in Canada, with the majority of foreign doctors accepted being specialists from Australia, New Zealand, Britain, the US, Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and South Africa, largely from the mid-1990s onward. That excludes a lot of foreign doctors, and almost all GPs. There has been a concerted push within the Canadian medical community to build bilateral credential recognition mechanisms, even in the face of GP shortages, and the needle hasn't moved much on recognizing doctors outside a limited range of institutions. So, at least within the Canadian context, physician regulatory bodies have judged the additional training to be beneficial for patients.

(In case you're curious, I've linked the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada credential recognition criteria below.)

http://www.royalcollege.ca/rcsite/c...gs/jurisdiction/accepted-jurisdictions-e


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