Society of Philippine Surgeons in America (SPSA)

The United States military draft in the late 1950s greatly depleted the country’s physician manpower. This gave birth to the US Exchange Visitors’ Program to fill in the healthcare provider vacuum. Thousands of foreign physicians from around the world were “lured in” with various tempting incentives from US training hospitals and university medical centers, including the fly-now-pay-later plan, to fill in the gap.

Hundred upon hundreds of medical graduates from the Philippines joined their colleagues from other nations and responded to this open gate of opportunity to take their residency training in the land of milk and honey. Since then, most hospitals in the country have Filipino interns, residents, and nurses on their staff.

This era and “deliverance” has changed the image of the Filipinos in the United States, which in 1763, when the first “Manilamen” jumped ship and settled in Saint Malo in the Bayous of Louisiana, and even later, in the 1920s and 30s in California, was mainly that of sugarcane and pineapple farm workers cannery employees, and hotel kitchen help, to today’s complimentary “bias” on the minds of the public that presupposes all Filipinos in the United States are physicians and nurses, a general testimonial to their collective impressive professionalism and performance that captivated the Americans, including their peers in the medical profession.