Mandatory Residency Training For The United States

New discoveries spawn more medical research in medical colleges. In 1910, Abraham Flexner of the Carnegie Foundation publishes his study on medical education, and induces major medical education reform. Medical knowledge flourishes and specialists account for 20% of physicians in 1940. Hospitals begin to embellish new medical technology as physicians relied on the hospital as a source of access to new technology and as a facility in which to care for their sickest patients. (Writer, Dominguez, 2011, 2-6)

There is a need for doctors in all specialties, but none more than primary care. Primary care physicians (also known as family practitioners) are the workhorses of medicine. They are the doctors on the front lines working in clinics and hospitals providing medical care for anyone who comes through the door. Family practitioners are jacks-of-all-trades but masters of none, leaving the mastering to the specialists who specialize in certain areas of medicine. Specialists typically see patients who have either been referred by family practitioners or have more severe issues. Because of this, we need more family doctors than any other kind of doctor, which is why the decline of this specialty is so serious. Why is it that medical students are going different routes? That is the million-dollar question researchers have been studying in order to reverse the trend.

Similar to my home state of Louisiana, Tennessee has also struggled with a chronic shortage of rural primary care physicians. While this statistic does depict a true challenge for our two states, over the years Meharry Medical College has done an exceptional job in inspiring medical students to one-day practice in a rural setting and bring about better health care to underserved individuals, regardless of race or ethnicity. This aspect

According to Health Resources and Services Administration If the system for providing primary care in 2020 were to stay fundamentally the same as today, there will be an estimated shortage of 20,400 primary care physicians ("Projecting the Supply and Demand for Primary Care Practitioners Through 2020," n.d.). In addition this projection doesn’t include the decreasing number of people perusing the medical degree and the baby boomers retiring form this filed of science. In the hand we are experiencing a significant increase in NPs and PAs. Considering this projected shortage, which is actually a very frightening situation the increasing number of NPs and PAs, can effectively be integrated; we could reduce the number of physician shortage by over 69 percent in 2020.

Currently, there is still a large shortage of primary care practitioners in the United States. The margin between available providers and those in need continues to grow. Many people without proper access to care have to delay seeking help for what ails them ("Health Wanted," 2012). Glicken & Miller (2013) state that approximately 16,000 primary care providers would be necessary to meet the existing demand. Rural communities would represent the area of greatest need followed closely by low-income urban areas. The number of underserved individuals is estimated to have reached fifty-seven million. This demand will only increase, as 52,000 primary care providers are expected to be needed by the year 2025 (Glicken & Miller, 2013, p.1883-1889).

The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of the physician shortage in Unite State of America. This is more exactly delineate as a gap between the population’s demand for primary care services and the capacity of primary care, as currently delivered, respond to the demand. According to Nile (2015), physician is person trained and licensed to practice medicine or an individual with a Doctor degree in medicine. Physicians play a central role in health care delivery. Although now, physicians are sharing patient care responsibility with a team of Physician assistant (PA) and Nurse Practitioner (NP), especially with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act implementations. The PA and NP are alternative to medical doctor or physician

Primary care physicians are vital to prevention. These physicians are a patient’s first line of contact with the healthcare system and they have the difficult task of conducting checkups to screen for all diseases. Unfortunately, it is much more common for a medical student to specialize in another field due to a much greater salary and more narrowed scope of practice. As a result, the number of specialists is much greater than the number of primary care physicians, creating a

“A Council on Graduate Medical Education document anticipated that there had, “been 242,500 PCPs within the United States in 2010, and nearly 25% (55,000) of them aged ≥56 years. The common reimbursement for PCPs is approximately only 55% that of other scientific specialties, main to a cumulative lifetime internet income gap of about $ 3.5 million per primary care physician” (Collins, 2012). This makes being a primary care physician less desirable since the incentive is so low. A similar associated issue is the very low percent of medical institution students who are choosing to become primary care physicians. Another issue is that about 59 million Americans live in regions with health professional shortages. Shortages in a number of other primary care healthcare specialists exist, especially with nurses. “In 2014, US schools turned away almost 70,000 qualified nursing applicants because they didn’t have the capacity for them. In fact, almost two-thirds of surveyed nursing schools cited faculty shortages as the reason for not accepting all qualified applicants into nursing baccalaureate programs” (Erickson, 2016). This greatly contributes to the shortage of nurses if they cannot receive proper education and training to join the workforce. Many healthcare service professionals shortages are in regions within

The physician shortage is of highest concern in the United States, especially since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been passed. The question is, do we really have a physician shortage? Is it by geographical region or by specialty? I will explore this question and have several different solutions to the physician shortage problem.

One of the trends that is consistent between Pennsylvania and Kentucky is the discrepancy between physicians available in rural areas versus urban areas. For example, in Pennsylvania in 2012 for every 100,000 persons in an urban area of the state there was 273 physicians available. While in the rural areas per every 100,000 in population there was only 150 physicians. (2012 Pulse of Pennsylvania’s Physician and Physician Assistant Workforce, 2014). The reason behind this trend is simple, the larger the area the greater the financial opportunities. Also urban areas tend to have larger hospital facilities that provide access to well-equipped facilities, with lab services, radiology departments, staffed surgical suites, new medical devices to assist in surgery such as laser and robotics, and updated imaging devices. (Johnson and Cooper, 1982). These statistics highlight the need to institute methods that will attract providers to the rural areas. Whether this is through scholarship programs for those who intend to work in a rural area upon graduation, accepting federal funds to expand rural hospitals and improve technology, accepting federal funds to expand Medicaid programs, or a combination of all three providers need incentive to move into the rural areas. The standard of care needs to be consistent across the state no matter what area a patient lives in.

The author speaks upon the residents as, “Lazy and spoiled” (Johnson 2012, para.4). Residents overcome many obstacles along the road in order to achieve their goal with the help of their dedication. Many believe that it takes a high GPA and a slew of experience to get into medical school. Instead of overworking the residences, imposing stricter entrance requirements for medical school applicants should be considered. “Society has become too lax and undisciplined, so the young have no sense of dedication or responsibility as a result” (Johnson 2012, para. 4). However, university admission requirements are increasing every year so as a result it forces students to work harder in order to keep up with their competition. Overall medical residents are knowledgeable and well educated individuals who earned their respect post 8 years of medical

Economics and health were two independent subjects in high school, but nothing is truly independent in the real world. Supply and demand, one of the principals of economics, perfectly sums up the problem with primary health care. The supply of primary care physicians, also known as PCPs, is lacking by almost 52,000 providers to be able to fulfill the demand of the public within the next couple of years, and this isn’t a new issue (Petterson et al., 2012). Since the 1970’s there has been a shortage of PCPs, and it is becoming a bigger problem as the population grows and ages (Wilensky, 2014). The number of PCPs currently in the United States is not enough to meet the needs of the population. The view of primary care physicians and their salaries need to change in the U.S. to encourage more medical students to enter this much-needed field of practice. This paper will explore the reasons behind the shortage of PCPs and how the Affordable Care Act and the American Nurses Association are addressing this issue.

An alarming issue that has occurred over the past 10 years is the lack of potential primary care candidates. The practice overall has experience a modest decline of late as the number of medical students and

Primary care is a first and vital step to accessing medical services that includes: (a) health promotion, (b) disease prevention, (c) health maintenance, (d) counseling, (e) patient education, (f) diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic illnesses in a variety of health care settings (American Academy of Family Physicians, 2016). Today, the shortage of primary care physicians/providers (PCP) and the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have presented the nation with a great quandary. It has been estimated that the shortage of PCPs will rise to 66,000 by the year 2025 due to the Medical Doctors (MD) leaving this practice in the pursuit of specialization and thus more money (Buerhaus, DesRoches, Dittus, & Donelan, 2015). Moreover, MDs are less likely than APNs to practice in urban and rural communities, offer services to other underserved groups as well as accepting Medicare consumers (Buerhaus et al., 2015). Additionally, many of these communities are left struggling to obtain needed medical care. While at the same time, the population continues to grow; patients increase in age suffering from many acute and chronic ailments.

It is unreasonable to permit medical schools to continue to form across the country and increasingly accept a growing number of students as the admission into a residency is only growing in competitiveness. Most residency programs receive funding from Medicare and the number of residency positions that Medicare will pay for was set in a 1997 law called the Balanced Budget Act (Guram, 2013). Therefore, as residencies are notoriously competitive they have become close to impossible to match. After incurring a large amount of student debt, grueling exams, and enormous workloads it is unreasonable for medical schools students to go unmatched due to a lack of space. Thus, it is essential for the number of residencies to increase or the number of