Dr. Antonio Madrazo-Ibarra video conferences into our discussion from his apartment in New York City. The sun sprinkles diamond-shaped glints over the East River a few blocks away on a quiet Sunday morning.
Antonio is wearing a white shirt, only accessorized with a black watch. He has short brown hair with a five o’clock shadow at ten-thirty in the morning. As a native of Mexico, he graduated with his medical degree from Universidad Panamericana in Mexico. Today, he has the day off from his research position—studying knee osteoarthritis—at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), a world-renowned musculoskeletal care center in Manhattan. “If you want to meet the expert in hip replacement or anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, you can. You just go down the hall and talk to the guy,” he says excitedly.
Next year, he plans to apply for orthopedic residency training in the United States because he believes that training is better here. But for international medical graduates (IMGs) like Antonio—who are physicians that completed medical school in a different country—getting a spot in a U.S.-based residency program is competitive and sometimes nearly impossible1.
“Being an IMG is the toughest thing.” He lowers his voice, “You have to be better than everyone else for a residency program to take you.”
Indeed, IMGs have statistics stacked against them. According to the National Resident Matching Program in 2022, only eleven IMGs, who were not U.S. citizens, were offered a spot in orthopedics out of 875 positions2. This selectivity may be due to the limited number of positions and the popularity of orthopedics among medical school graduates.
Antonio hopes that doing research at HSS will eventually bolster his application into an orthopedic residency. He adds that at HSS, “All the staff is helpful, but they tell me to have a Plan B.”
He hesitates for a few seconds. “If I don’t get into an orthopedic residency program here, I’ll go back to Mexico to do a residency and then come back to the U.S. for a fellowship.”
“I tell people that I’m an IMG, and they say, ‘Maybe you should try something else, maybe you shouldn’t try super hard.'” He looks around the room, “You get unmotivated, if that’s the right word.”
He points out that New York City, while exciting, can also be overwhelming. It helps that Alexa, his high school girlfriend, currently lives in New Jersey. “It’s been amazing,” he says, “I get a lot of support from her, and it’s like having family close to me.”
Family played an important role in Antonio’s pursuit of medicine. He smiles broadly when he explains that his father is in the construction business, his mom is a clinical psychologist, and his entire family still lives in Queretaro, Mexico. When Antonio declared his intent on being a doctor, his family was thrilled— except for his grandfather, who encouraged him to be a “Doctor of Construction.”
But regardless of where he completes specialty training, Antonio will return home to practice medicine. He sighs, “…I miss my family so much. I want to be closer to them. I wasn’t home for my mother’s birthday. I know birthdays happen every year, but a couple of years from now, I will regret missing these important things.”
Sources:
DePasse JM, Palumbo MA, Eberson CP, Daniels AH. Academic characteristics of orthopedic surgery residency applicants from 2007 to 2014. The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery [Internet]. 2016 May 4 [cited 2022 Mar 28];98(9):788–95. Available from: https://journals.lww.com/00004623-201605040-00011
Residency data & reports [Internet]. NRMP. [cited 2022 Mar 28]. Available from: https://www.nrmp.org/match-data-analytics/residency-data-reports/