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The eMatchPhysicians Blog

Glamorize Your Doctor; Encouraging Students to Go Into Primary Care

Posted on: Friday, October 23, 2009

“In March 2009, U.S. medical school graduates filled only 42% (1,083) of the 2,555 resident positions for family medicine. More than 200 of the positions were left unfilled nationwide. The majority of other spots were filled by non-U.S. citizens educated internationally (20.7%), graduates of colleges of osteopathic medical schools (10.5%) and U.S. citizens educated internationally (18%).” from USA Today Article, Doctor Shortage Looms as Primary Care Loses Its Pull

The story may even be worse than that. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, it was revealed that less than 5% of students going into medical school are looking at becoming primary care doctors, for many reasons, including that of salary. This is alarming on a number of levels.

Right now, primary care doctors are the first point of contact for every American. Primary care physicians also figure prominently in Obama’s new health care bill, with cuts being made to specialists and favor being shown strongly to primary care doctors. Physician specialists and nurse practitioners will become the primary points of contact for most Americans if there is a shortage of primary care doctors, a situation that most Americans do not want to see in their future due to the fact that PA’s and NP’s have less training and experience than the primary care physician.

This is a serious situation that Obama addresses in his new Health Care bill, but at the expense of specialists. In our last blog, we talked about how Obama is even penalizing specialists financially with the new bill. The truth is, the money has to come from somewhere for new primary care physicians, and Obama’s bill sees it coming from specialists. There is no infinite supply of health care dollars to go around.

While international medical doctors are frequently trained to the same levels as US primary care physicians, there may be a language barrier between them and the patients that keeps them from successfully communicating. This could be addressed with organizations and physician recruiting agencies giving these doctors free English as a Second Language classes, thus helping to integrate these physicians better into their roles in the United States.

The truth is that primary care doctors are not glamorized the way that surgeons and specialists are either by word of mouth or in the popular media. A surgeon that has removed a cancer tumor is widely regarded as an angel, while a primary care physician that helped their patients follow a preventative program to avoid cancer is rarely lauded with such honors. This is a paradigm shift that we have to make as a society; glamorize your doctor. Talk about them glowingly and how the advice that you have gotten from them has really helped your health. We also have to learn to be more accepting of international doctors and be understanding when they cannot communicate so well with us.

Recruiters can also sweeten the pot for primary care physicians. If a student is offered a higher bonus to pay off their student loans immediately, they are more likely to take the associated position. There are many things that we can do to encourage primary care physicians, and we should be pulling out the entire bag of tricks to make sure that we have as many as possible going into primary care going forward.

Tags: obama's health care bill, physician job openings, physician specialists, primary healthcare

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