Better Health: Smart Health Commentary

Featured

Are International Medical Students The Answer To The Looming Physician Shortage?

September 18th, 2011 by Shadowfax in Opinion
1 Comment »

Howard Dean wrote an op-ed defending the use of foreign international medical graduates:

Today, young physicians with degrees from international medical schools face skepticism from some in the American medical community. That strikes me as misinformed thinking, given the large number of international medical school graduates practicing in the United States, alongside American medical school graduates, and given that the American medical system depends on them to fill the growing doctor shortage.

The federal Health Resources and Services Administration predicts there will be a shortage of approximately 55,000 physicians in the United States by 2020. We simply can’t build the capacity to meet our growing needs for skilled physicians — especially given budgetary constraints on schools receiving government subsidies. Even if the new medical schools now in the planning stages all come to pass, they won’t turn out enough primary care physicians to meet urgent needs in urban and rural communities.

I actually don’t have a lot to say about the IMG thing,  I have worked with and hired many IMG’s and their skill and quality vary as much as US graduates. But this whole argument seems to miss the central point regarding the projected physician shortage. The supply of new medical graduates is not the choke point, under the current state of affairs. The choke point is the number of residency training slots. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*

Medical Students, Specialty Practice, And More Money

July 19th, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Video
No Comments »

With medical students graduating, on average, with almost $160,000 of debt, it’s a major reason why they’re choosing more lucrative specialty practice, which can offer salaries multiple times more than those of primary care fields.

In this clip from The Vanishing Oath, medical economist Amitabh Chandra, Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, discusses that influence, which contributes to a drastic decline of primary care residency slots being filled by American medical graduates.

Of course, it’s not only money. Primary care practice has a litany of obstacles that can contribute to rapid physician burnout, compounded by the fact that good primary care role models are largely absent from academic settings.

But there’s no denying that the salary disparity is an influential factor, and for many students, often a deciding one.

A video excerpt from The Vanishing Oath, a film directed by Ryan Flesher, M.D.:

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*