A foreign "trauma doctor" who worked in Chile's public and private hospitals, and a real doctor accused of selling sick notes worth billions: two Chilean cases about the register

Chile requires foreign-trained doctors to pass a national examination, the EUNACOM, before they can work in the public system, and maintains a register through the Superintendency of Health. Two 2025 cases show the register being bypassed from both sides.

According to Emol, in February 2025 police detained a Cuban national in the Quilpué and La Calera area who had been working as a general doctor with a claimed speciality in traumatology, in both public and private health facilities, without the qualifications or registration he claimed. The report said he had treated patients in the public network. In November 2025, Emol reported that a court ordered pre-trial detention for a licensed doctor accused of issuing false medical leave certificates on a scale prosecutors said had defrauded the system of more than 13 billion pesos.

The first case is the familiar one: a foreign degree, a claimed speciality, and employers in a country short of doctors who did not confirm either with the superintendency before putting him on a ward. The second is its mirror: a genuine registration used as the instrument of a fraud, which is why the register also records sanctions, not only names.

Chile is a destination that some Latin American and Caribbean medical graduates look to, and the EUNACOM is the point where recognition is decided. For a student anywhere, that is the model to understand. Most countries that take foreign-trained doctors have a gate of this kind, a national exam or a verification-and-registration process, and the agent's phrase "valid worldwide" means nothing against it. Ask the school where its graduates have actually passed such gates. If the answer is a list of countries without evidence, assume none.