Now that India has flooded the world with FFMGs (Fake Foreign Medical Grads) we must rely on other means to exclude impostor doctors. The US has two main defenses against impostors:
1. US doctors must complete a supervised US residency. Unfortunately, this residency requirement has been eliminated in 19 states, including mine.
2. Our second and final safeguard is the licensing exam.
Almost all US doctors must eventually pass the three parts of the USMLE (US Medical Licensing Exam.)
Unfortunately, exam fraud is as simple as hiring a ringer to take the test for you (he needs to look vaguely like the picture on your driver's license) and avoiding the test centers that check fingerprints. Or, impostors could obtain the questions in advance, from insiders or from earlier test takers.
If this sounds like a conspiracy theory, well, it already happened, and you will never guess where.
In 2024, hundreds of scores were invalidated due to leaked questions in Nepal (an Indian suburb) and to anomalous high scores at international centers in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Jordan. The statistically-unlikely scores were eventually blamed on early exam takers sharing the questions in WhatsApp groups.
In other news, you can take the first 2 parts of the US medical licensing exam in India. Then you can start practicing medicine in the USA. Your Indian doctor might be a resident who purchased his Indian medical diploma then purchased the US licensing exam questions and took the test in India.
Fortunately, Part 3 of the exam, which must be passed at some point during residency, can only be taken inside the USA. So we can breathe easy, right? Well, not exactly.
The US medical licensing exam is written and scored by two organizations.
The first is the FSMB (Federation of State Medical Boards) whose president and CEO is.... wait for it.... Dr. Humayun Chaudhry.
The other organization that writes and scores the US medical licensing exam is the NBME (National Board of Medical Examiners.) NBME's Chairman of the Board is.... wait for it... Dr. Reena Karani. Why yes, she does happen to be Indian.
The physical testing centers are managed by a company called Prometric, whose Chief Products and Technology officer is.... wait for it.... Jay Chakrapani Are you seeing the problem with our safeguards against fake doctors?
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