How to Work Overseas as a Doctor (Ft. Dr. Marcia Glass)

Working Overseas in Medicine: My Conversation With Dr. Marcia Glass

Welcome back to The Interesting MD! I’m Dr. Rob Beck—a physician, lifelong learner, and your guide for exploring what doctors do outside the office, from balancing burnout to finding purpose in and out of scrubs.

Have you ever wondered what it’s really like to practice medicine overseas, or how to get involved with global humanitarian organizations like Doctors Without Borders? You’re in the right place. In this episode, I had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Marcia Glass, who’s not only a long-time friend and mentor but also an inspiring physician with boots-on-the-ground experience in places most of us only read about.

Whether you’re early in your career or thinking about new adventures when you’re closer to retiring, read on for behind-the-scenes wisdom, real stories, and actionable advice for doctors passionate about global health.

From London to New Orleans: Embracing Uncertainty

Dr. Marcia Glass has never followed the “typical” path. Growing up between London and Puerto Rico (her dad was an Associated Press reporter), Marcia describes herself as a “third country kid.” She’s spent her career as both an insider and outsider—constantly navigating new cultures and communities.

After med school at Georgetown and training at Tulane, Marcia found herself unexpectedly charmed by New Orleans’ warmth (literally and figuratively—you’ll appreciate this story if you’ve ever visited during Mardi Gras or hurricane season).

New Orleans has a way of working its spell, but it wasn’t always an easy ride. We both shared post-Katrina stories—evacuations, returning to a city in chaos, clinging to 504 area codes and sports season tickets as talismans that, in some small way, kept us tied to home.

The devastation and resilience after Katrina would become Marcia’s unexpected “job interview” for a future with Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF).

Realities of Disaster, Adaptation, and Growth

The residue of those disaster years in New Orleans, when the basics—electricity, water, communication—were luxuries rather than guarantees, shaped the perspective Marcia would bring to international work. When applying to Doctors Without Borders, she recalls being asked, “Can you deal with lack of electricity and water?” Her answer: “I just went through Katrina.”

That kind of hands-on adversity, paired with flexibility and curiosity, is a recurring theme for anyone considering global medicine.

First Steps Into Medicine Overseas

Marcia didn’t just jump in blindly. She started with international rotations—working in Argentina and India as a med student, volunteering for a medical mission ship to Haiti, and eventually responding to the pull of humanitarian aid.

By 2006, just out of residency, she was doing back-to-back missions with MSF and even worked as a government doctor in Liberia post-civil war—a position that involved everything from 72-hour ER shifts to negotiating with local officials, including the former personal physician of a dictator.

The realities are stark: working in countries with four physicians for the entire country, where your “intern” status mostly just means you work until you drop from exhaustion, and where mortality rates can be close to 30%. Marcia recounts, “If I tried to take a nap, I would just have to make the peace with the fact that some people are going to die because I was napping.” Not your average clinic day.

Evolving Motivations: From Saviors to Partners

One of the most powerful insights from our conversation is how motivations evolve. Early on, the appeal of being the “savior doctor” is common. But after cycles of triage and firefighting, Marcia found more fulfillment in building health system capacity—training local providers, helping to structure ongoing palliative care programs, and focusing on sustainable change.

It’s also about humility. The early days of “do-gooder colonialism” in global health are out of style (for good reason). Today, organizations—and physicians—are reckoning with power dynamics, inequality, and the critical need for partnerships rather than paternalism.

Lessons That Changed Our Practice

Marcia’s time abroad changed her as a physician—making her far more conservative in resource use and more focused on listening, observation, and clinical acumen versus endless tests. “We could only get like one potassium a week, so I’d just tell people: eat a lot of bananas.” When you have to diagnose with your brain and your hands (not a full workup and imaging), you rediscover the fundamentals of medicine.

Coming back to practice in North America, those experiences also flip your perspective. Here, we might be “saving people from medicine” just as often as we’re saving them with medicine—caught in a system where sometimes our advanced tools extend suffering, not life with dignity. That’s a big reason why Marcia (and frankly, myself) are drawn to palliative care, where the goals of care are front and center.

Practical Advice: How You Can Get Involved

If you’re inspired (or just curious), how do you get started in international medicine and humanitarian aid?

1. Finish Your Residency:
Virtually all reputable organizations require physicians to have completed their formal training.

2. Learn a Language:
French and Spanish are incredibly valuable. Even rusty language skills are worth brushing up—you can start now with Duolingo, online tutors, or conversation partners.

3. Start With an Organization:
For first-timers, work with established NGOs like MSF (Doctors Without Borders), Partners in Health, or other international medical groups. They’ll help with logistics, licensing, and, most importantly, your safety.

4. Test the Waters First:
If you’ve never traveled overseas, try short-term clinical projects or rotations in less intense settings. Practice your language skills, get comfortable navigating new cultures, and build your confidence.

5. Think About Timing—and Money:
Early-career doctors can often defer student loans while abroad (as Marcia did with MSF’s modest stipend). Later-career doctors may want to view pro bono work as a meaningful “charitable donation” of their time and expertise. And don’t forget: the cost of living abroad is often much lower—your burn rate drops, which can offset lower pay.

6. Consider Fellowships:
There are now global health and global health hospitalist fellowships at institutions like UCSF, often with academic and fieldwork components.

7. Build Sustainable Partnerships:
Ultimately, the goal is long-term capacity-building—not just parachuting in, working heroically, and leaving. That’s why Marcia’s work today in palliative care education in the Congo (and training doctors across India, Uganda, Trinidad, and Navajo Nation) focuses on sharing knowledge and supporting local leaders.

Why It Matters: Perspective, Compassion, and Renewal

For both Marcia and myself, practicing medicine overseas has been a profound source of growth, humility, and balance. It puts the stresses of Western medicine into perspective, renews your sense of purpose, and reminds you why you became a doctor in the first place.

If balancing burnout, rekindling your sense of mission, or doing some good in the world is calling your name—there’s always a way to get involved. Start small, stay open-minded, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find yourself eating bananas in Liberia or trying to translate your best medical French in Kinshasa.

Want to know more? Reach out—I love connecting fellow adventurers with the right resources. And don’t forget to check out The Interesting MD on YouTube for more conversations that take you beyond the bedside.

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Stay interesting, Dr. Rob Beck