Department of Foreign Affairs photo via Flickr Creative Commons
The United States may lack a sufficient amount of doctors with less medical graduates from Muslim countries entering the country under the Trump administration.
According to a study released in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the number of foreign medical graduates from Muslim-majority countries entering the US to become doctors has declined by 15 percent.
TRT World reported the US could face a shortage of as many as 122,000 doctors by the year 2032.
There has always been a strong demand for physicians in the US. CGTN stressed “population growth, aging and a federal cap on funding for residency training” were some of the reasons for such shortage of physicians.
John Boulet, vice president of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates and main author of this study, stated that the amount of medical graduates from Muslim countries coming to the US has plummeted significantly under the Trump administration.
The Arab Weekly reported it dropped from 4,244 during Barack Obama’s presidency to 3,604 in 2018.
Boulet highlighted how citizens from Muslim-majority nations made up 4.5% of the US physician work force in 2019, but was expected to drop with Trump’s anti-immigration policies. CGTN added that most graduates came from Pakistan, Egypt and Iran.
Boulet and his colleagues pinpointed Trump’s foreign policies, such as travel bans on Muslim majority countries, to have “affected the inflow of International Medical Graduates (IMGs) by restricting travel to the country for citizens from specific nations.”
The authors added, “even a perceived immigration ban could affect who chooses to complete the requirements for certification.” The study argued that the difficult visa obtaining processes under Trump dissuaded program directors of medical residencies from making job offers.
The authors further suggested that the decreasing contribution of IMGs from Muslim-majority nations will “exacerbate gaps in the US physician workforce.”
Boulet concluded that citizens from countries “no longer seek residency positions in the US” which will widen the gaps in the physician workforce under Trump’s administration.
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