Doctors confined by borders: Trump order disrupts surgeries and research at Seattle hospitals

Only a few days ago, Iraqi surgeon Dr. Ghazwan Abdulla Hasan was packing his bags and getting ready to head to Seattle to join the highly specialized neurosurgeons at the Seattle Science Foundation. This week, he was forced to cancel his plans. Hasan will not be able to perform spinal surgeries as part of a 12-month fellowship he was set to begin in February.

He and some of the 30 other fellows from all over the world who joined the nonprofit foundation to collaborate on life-saving spinal research were devastated this week by President Donald Trump’s executive order banning people from seven predominantly Muslim nations — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — from entering the U.S.

We have surgeons who travel from, and go to, the Middle East,” said Dr. Rod Oskouian, president and CEO of the Seattle Science Foundation and chief of spine at the Swedish Neuroscience Institute. “We rely on global talent and doctors are without borders. ... This is going to have a big impact on health care. It’s going to have a big impact on research. It’s going to have a big impact on doctors.”

While much of the focus immediately after Trump’s Jan. 27 order was on technology companies and their employees, the medical and research fields will be hit even harder. In Seattle, where researchers come from all over the world to work with the premier institutes, including the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Allen Institute and Seattle Science Foundation, the order will slow or indefinitely stall research, surgeries and important medical work.

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/02/03/seattle-hospitals-trump-immigration-order-doctors.html?ana=e_tf&s=newsletter&ed=2017-02-03&u=ColXVN5SPzQtLHFP87ho2w07857290&t=1486166919&j=77281531

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