Everyone be aware, however, that some of the biggest "quacks" I have known stayed in practice because they had a very loyal group of patients who believed them to be wonderful. Good bedside manner and patient comfort doesn't always equal competence.
Around 1971 or so, I waited tables at the French Quarter Inn in New Orleans trying to dig up enough money to continue my education. It was only 2 years prior to that I was coming home from Vietnam and who was assigned to me as a busboy? A 30+ years old Vietnamese guy. I gave him a hard time at every corner but he stuck in there and pretty soon we started talking over a cup of coffee or two. He was a lawyer in Vietnam and was in the U.S. not only to become a citizen but to study so he could pass the bar. A foreign lawyer bussing tables in order to go to law school in the U.S.A. Wow! I had to admit, he had a lot more going for him than I did at the time. He had already paid his dues at a French law school and now he had to do it all over again in an American law school in order to practice American law. Bottom line here is that people who were professionals in another country have to go back to school here in order to practice medicine, law, pharmacy, dentistry and a myriad of other areas of expertise. Granted, many do go through American colleges and universities from the start, but many already have degrees from other foreign countries but still have to go through nearly the whole program again here. I have a lot of respect for people who love their profession so much that they are willing to go the extra mille and I have a tendency to trust them if they indeed did have to go that extra mile.
Along the same lines, one of my EMT Basic, Intermediate, and Paramedic students was a doctor in Mexico. Apparently, in Mexico, doctors no longer qualify for government reimbursements after the age of 38 or so (I forget which age he said it was), which is something they put in place in order to make room for younger doctors. Anyhow, it's harder for a doctor over that age to make a living because they have to depend solely on private payers. With NAFTA, he was qualified to practice in the United States but still needed to pass the board exam. Wanting to earn a living while he prepared to pass the US boards, he thought working as a paramedic would familiarize him with some of the differences between Mexican medicine and US medicine. So he became a paramedic with an ambulance company in McAllen for a couple of years, then passed the boards, and I assume he's working as a doctor here now.