NEW YORK, USA -- In what has been described as a very fierce turf battle, rooted in the growing pressure on the medical profession and academia, Caribbean offshore medical schools say they are increasingly attacked by New York medical schools, CMC reported.

The deans of the Caribbean schools claim that New York State's 16 medical schools have begun an aggressive campaign to persuade the New York State Board of Regents to make it harder, if not impossible, for Caribbean and other foreign schools to use New York hospitals as extensions of their own campuses.

The changes, if approved, could put at least some of the Caribbean schools in jeopardy, their deans said, because their small islands lack the hospitals to provide the hands-on training that a doctor needs to be licensed in the United Sates.

Medical experts in New York also said that the dispute has far-reaching implications for medical education and the licensing of physicians across the United States.

More than 42,000 students apply to medical schools in the United States every year, with only about 18,600 matriculating, leaving some of those, who are rejected to look to foreign schools.

Graduates of foreign medical schools in the Caribbean and elsewhere constitute more than a quarter of the residents in the United States hospitals.

With experts predicting a shortage of 90,000 doctors in the United States by 2020, the defenders of these schools say that they fill a need because their graduates are more likely than their American-trained peers to go into primary and family care, rather than into higher paying specialities like surgery.

Medical experts say New York has been particularly affected by the influx because it trains more medical students and residents -- fledging doctors who have just graduated from medical school -- than any other state.

Caribbean News Now