Patrick Jafari - Did you know you can now attend medical school online? It is notions like these that have gotten some foreign (particularly Caribbean) medical school in hot waters.

The AMA had an article on Jan 16th of this year voicing concerns over the credibility of Caribbean medical schools and their students. The article praises California as the only state to perform rigorous site visits and essentially rate these schools. The concern seems to be that some of these graduates (or the schools themselves even) do not meet the minimum standards of practice compared to US medical schools.



The article suggests that there should be other methods of evaluation aside from the USMLE and clinical tests to evaluate the competency of these graduates. The article quotes Dr. Jerry Thornton, President of one of the more popular of these schools, St. Matthew?s University, which was recently denied by the California board. It seems, California is the only state that holds a list of medical schools around the world that supposedly meet the standards. Yes, even Saddam Husain School of Medicine is listed.



We couldn?t agree more that scrutinizing Caribbean medical schools is a good idea. After all, once passed, the accreditation would give more credibility to the ones that are benevolent and of course meet standards.