Foreign-Trained Doctors by Country
The US has more foreign-trained doctors than any other country in raw numbers, which gets read as the US relying on international physicians more than anywhere else. The share data says the opposite: several countries lean on international recruitment far more heavily. Here’s what the numbers actually show, and why the US ends up with the largest count anyway.
| Country | Foreign-trained doctors | Foreign-born doctors |
|---|---|---|
| 🇮🇱 Israel | 57.8% | — |
| 🇦🇺 Australia | ~31.4% | 54.3% |
| 🇳🇿 New Zealand | 42.1% | — |
| 🇳🇴 Norway | 42.1% | — |
| 🇮🇪 Ireland | 40.5% | — |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | ~36% | 40.6% |
| 🇨🇦 Canada | 24.6% | 37.1% |
| 🇺🇸 United States | ~31% | 29.7% |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | ~15% | 21.6% |
“Foreign-trained” = medical degree earned outside the country of practice. “Foreign-born” = physician born outside the country of practice (can include people trained domestically). Figures compiled from OECD’s International Migration Outlook 2025 and OECD foreign-trained-doctor statistics; US and UK foreign-trained figures are the latest OECD has published (2016 data). Percentages are independently sourced per country and aren’t from a single identical survey year, so treat them as directional, not decimal-precise.
Why the US has the most, not the highest share
The US has the largest number of foreign-trained doctors of any country in the world, but that’s a function of scale, not an unusually high reliance on international recruitment. The OECD notes the US “recruited just 33 foreign-trained doctors for every 100 new medical graduates,” well below the rate of 200+ in some peer countries that lean much harder on international hiring to fill shortages.
- Market size. The US has over a million practicing physicians. Even a below-average foreign-trained share still produces more foreign-trained doctors in absolute terms than 100% of a smaller country’s entire physician workforce.
- Pay. US physician compensation significantly exceeds the UK, Canada, and most of Europe, making it a strong draw for anyone who can clear the entry bar.
- A standardized qualifying exam. The USMLE gives any medical graduate worldwide a defined, merit-based path to prove eligibility, unlike countries with more discretionary credential recognition.
- The residency bottleneck limits entry, it doesn’t drive it. The number of Medicare-funded residency positions has been frozen by federal law since 1997. That cap gates how many international medical graduates (IMGs) can enter US practice each year, regardless of employer demand — it’s a big part of why the US doesn’t lead on share despite being the most financially attractive destination.
- Many “foreign-trained” doctors are American. A meaningful share of IMGs in the US Match are US citizens who trained abroad, often at Caribbean schools that exist specifically to serve applicants who didn’t get into a US medical school and plan to return and practice in the US.
What the 2026 Match shows
The 2026 NRMP Main Residency Match offered 44,344 positions and filled 41,482 (93.5%). Of the roughly 20,934 active US MD-senior applicants, about 1,361 went unmatched. International medical graduates — US-citizen and non-US-citizen combined — filled about 9,684 positions; nearly 3,000 of those were US-citizen IMGs. The non-US-citizen IMG match rate fell to a five-year low of 56.4% this cycle.
Sources: OECD, International Migration Outlook 2025 ↗ · Statista, foreign-trained doctors by country ↗ · NRMP, 2026 Main Residency Match Results ↗ · American Hospital Association, GME funding fact sheet ↗