FORT COLLINS — Muthanna Jabbar is the perfect candidate to help the U.S. health care system attack its growing shortage of family doctors.
He’s a licensed physician, trained in English using top-of-the-line British textbooks and Western technology, his expertise forged by the traumas of a war zone.
He’s grateful and eager to serve the needy. He’s also studious and self-deprecating. The problem: Jabbar’s medical diploma is from Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, a status that precludes U.S. employers from calling him “doctor.”
A Colorado group is now working with foreign-trained professionals such as Jabbar to qualify them for U.S. work. The Spring Institute’s “Welcome Back” initiative has helped more than 45 doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical professionals train for U.S. licensing exams since October, adding language skills and cultural training to acclimate their ambitious clients.
Jabbar spends his free time cramming for the U.S. medical exam he hopes to take in December; after that, he’ll need to compete for and then complete a years-long residency, which could be anywhere from Fort Collins to Alaska. But the former Iraqi doctor is happy to be back on the medical track.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel, even if the tunnel’s a little kinky here and there,” said Jabbar, who left Iraq after being threatened by local militia. “I’m an optimist by nature, so it may take a long time, but I know it will happen.”
The program is a natural twofer for the Spring Institute, which uses funding from the Colorado Refugee Services Program. Colorado can gain medical expertise while speeding the assimilation of highly qualified refugees, said Susan Downs-Karkos, Spring’s director of community integration.
“We really see this program as a model way for helping to serve the underserved across the state,” Downs-Karkos said. Refugees helped by the Spring Institute sign an agreement that they will work in a needy area.
The institute tries to match its help to the immediate needs of refugees from Iraq, Congo, Burma, Somalia and elsewhere.
Jabbar, for example, has no family here to support and can take the time to pursue a full physician’s license. Other foreign-trained doctors, though, may need a position sooner, and the Spring Institute can teach them about physician-assistant jobs that don’t exist overseas but are easier to qualify for here, Downs-Karkos said. Or a foreign-trained nurse may need help locating a transcript and getting it evaluated for knowledge gaps.
The institute helped to create a course at the University of Colorado Denver’s Anschutz Medical Campus called “Introduction to the U.S. Health Care System.” The institute can’t afford to pay for the students’ medical coursework, but it plans to offer English classes later this year.
The program’s budget is currently limited to helping officially designated refugees; a waiting list of immigrants not classified as refugees has reached 50 since the October launch. Similar programs launched in other cities serve 150 to 200 professionals a year once they reach full funding, officials said.
The U.S. health care system could use Jabbar when he’s ready. With more and more medical-school graduates choosing higher-paying specialties, the American Academy of Family Physicians projects a shortage of 40,000 family doctors nationwide by 2020. Waiting times for general appointments may steadily worsen as millions more Americans are covered by health insurance under the 2010 health-reform act.
Jabbar graduated from medical school in Baghdad in 2002 and emigrated to Turkey in 2008. He came to the U.S. last year to join his brother in Fort Collins. Jabbar studies in between paid jobs with Lutheran Family Services and volunteer work at St. Luke’s Medical Clinic.
He’s also learning to defer to nurses. Iraqi doctors take blood pressure and extensive medical histories, which are often handled by nurses in the U.S.
The hands-on medical care seems very familiar, said Jabbar, who describes his Iraqi training as nearly identical to a Western education. He spends much time listening carefully for language, from the brand names of pharmaceuticals to idiomatic American phrases.
His biggest challenge at the moment is trying to remember cell structures he first memorized at medical school in 1996.
“Thank god I’m single,” Jabbar laughs. “If I’m having kids and having to study, forget it.”
Michael Booth: 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com
