The licensing of medical professionals with overseas degrees has again aroused heated debate, and many dentists held a protest in Taipei on Nov. 24.
The controversy stemmed from an amendment to the Physicians’ Act (醫師法) in 2001 allowing people who studied overseas to be qualified to take the first stage of the two-stage national medical licensing exam.
As more countries joined the EU after the passing of the amendment, overseas study agencies have advertised English-language medical programs in Europe, targeting people who could not qualify for local medical schools.
Examination Yuan data showed that, from the late 2000s, the number of Taiwanese who studied overseas and applied for the national medical licensing exam has increased consistently, especially those who studied in Spain, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. As a result, many called them “Popo doctors/dentists” (波波醫生), which became a pejorative term.
In Taiwan, only the top 1 percent of students who take the national university entrance exam are eligible to enter domestic medical schools, and they usually take the first stage of the licensing exam during their school years, followed by an internship and the second stage of the exam.
The differences in qualification and allegedly in training among local and overseas graduates triggered a protest on May 31, 2009. About 2,000 doctors and local medical students demanded that the law be revised to limit overseas graduates’ participation in the licensing exam.
The Physicians’ Act was amended in 2022, requiring overseas graduates to pass a foreign degree evaluation test by the Ministry of Education to qualify for the first stage of the national licensing exam.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) last year announced a draft act that would allow an unspecified number of overseas dentistry graduates who have passed the first stage of the licensing exam to enroll in internships, which some locally trained dentists and students described as “opening a backdoor” to the field for overseas graduates.
At the same time, they opposed the MOHW’s NT$2.4 billion (US$73.94 million) plan for the second phase of a rural healthcare improvement program, which starts this year, allowing overseas dentistry graduates to apply for internships.
Their discontent resurfaced this month, after a court sentenced an obstetrician who had studied overseas to imprisonment for negligence causing death.
Amid public concerns, a list of hundreds of doctors who had studied abroad was leaked to the Internet. Local Chinese-language media reported that 41 of 69 graduates of a medical program in Poland in 2021 were Taiwanese and questioned their qualifications. Many people also called it “unfair,” saying many overseas graduates have physician parents or wealthy families.
After the Nov. 24 protest, the MOHW agreed to cap the internship quota of overseas dentistry graduates at 50 per year, tighten the qualifications for the foreign degree assessment and national medical licensing exam, and accept only local dental graduates to 55 rural areas in its healthcare program.
However, a local dentist alliance said that “our revolution has not yet succeeded” and demanded that the MOHW come up with “better solutions.”
On the other hand, a group of overseas graduates urged local dentists not to disparage or harass them.
Local doctors have suggested solutions such as increasing the cap for local medicine and dentistry departments, but the problem of hundreds of overseas graduates seeking a pathway to obtaining a medical license remains unsolved.
