The US refuses to import doctors, and throws up protectionist barriers in order to keep them out, but I don't think this can be said about developed countries in general.
"Any discussion of an alleged shortage of doctors in the United States should include an account of the doctors' efforts to create this shortage to keep their salaries high. It is also striking that, unlike the case of STEM workers, nurses, or farm workers, no one discusses bringing in more foreign doctors to alleviate this shortage. There would be hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of foreign physicians who would be happy to train to U.S. standards and work for even half of the pay that doctors get in the United States. This would reduce the cost of health care in the United States, freeing up tens of billions of dollars to be spent in other areas creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.
"And, we do know how to ensure that importing more foreign doctors does not hurt health care in the developing world. If the income taxes paid by foreign trained doctors were transferred to their home country, they could easily train 2-3 doctors for every doctor that came to the United States. This would ensure that developing countries gained from this arrangement as well."
edit:
Path to United States Practice Is Long Slog to Foreign Doctors
"The biggest challenge is that an immigrant physician must win one of the coveted slots in America’s medical residency system, the step that seems to be the tightest bottleneck.
"That residency, which typically involves grueling 80-hour workweeks, is required even if a doctor previously did a residency in a country with an advanced medical system, like Britain or Japan. The only exception is for doctors who did their residencies in Canada.
"The whole process can consume upward of a decade — for those lucky few who make it through."
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/rewriting...
"Any discussion of an alleged shortage of doctors in the United States should include an account of the doctors' efforts to create this shortage to keep their salaries high. It is also striking that, unlike the case of STEM workers, nurses, or farm workers, no one discusses bringing in more foreign doctors to alleviate this shortage. There would be hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of foreign physicians who would be happy to train to U.S. standards and work for even half of the pay that doctors get in the United States. This would reduce the cost of health care in the United States, freeing up tens of billions of dollars to be spent in other areas creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.
"And, we do know how to ensure that importing more foreign doctors does not hurt health care in the developing world. If the income taxes paid by foreign trained doctors were transferred to their home country, they could easily train 2-3 doctors for every doctor that came to the United States. This would ensure that developing countries gained from this arrangement as well."
edit:
Path to United States Practice Is Long Slog to Foreign Doctors
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/economy/long-slog...
"The biggest challenge is that an immigrant physician must win one of the coveted slots in America’s medical residency system, the step that seems to be the tightest bottleneck.
"That residency, which typically involves grueling 80-hour workweeks, is required even if a doctor previously did a residency in a country with an advanced medical system, like Britain or Japan. The only exception is for doctors who did their residencies in Canada.
"The whole process can consume upward of a decade — for those lucky few who make it through."