A Reflection and Comparison of Physician Training in the United States of America and United Kingdom

As a final year medical student at the University of Birmingham in England, I am very familiar with the training structure of physicians in the National Health Service (NHS). Recently, I had the opportunity to do 4 months of clinical electives at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester, Massachusetts and Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, New York. This experience allowed me to gain insight on the American training system for medical student graduates that provided a new perspective on physician training. The following reflection will be based on my experiences in the two countries and focus on the working guidelines for junior doctors in the United States that is based on the Accredited Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Duty Hours protocol, and will be compared to the European Work Time Directive (EWTD) guidelines for British junior doctors.