Check out Rita Rubin's piece at the USA Today as she discusses the results of a medical student survey. Only 2% of 1,177 respondents to a survey of students at 11 U.S. medical schools said they planned to pursue careers in general internal medicine. This came from a JAMA study. The worst part about it was that the respondents were fourth-year medical students. They had been through the school grinder and obviously realized the downfalls of primary care. What downfalls? How about student loan debt coupled with the fact that internists are one of the lowest paid physician specialties. I am proud to say that they are right up there with us family docs. By the way, why the study only looks at those going into internal medicine is a little weird because last time I checked, FPs counted as PCPs well. Hmmm. Anyway, here is a little nugget not mentioned. The study did say that 23% were going to go into IM but only 2% were not going to specialize. Hence, their results. The beauty of this is that those 2% can specialize at any time and many will. Most likely there will be LESS than 2% doing primary care! How lovely. Maybe those in charge of the specialty of internal medicine should do what the people in charge of family medicine do? You know, trap them into the specialty and then have no options to sub specialize once you are through. Once a family doc, always a family doc.....until you prematurely die. Okay, that last statement was a little bitter and I am sorry. Overwhelmed with trying to find more cerumen to clean. Gotta pay the bills, you know.
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1 comment:
In a strange way I take comfort in seeing there is a breed that is dieing off more rapidly than us family docs. Just wait until all of those endocrinologists can manage everyone's diabetes, the cardiologists can manage everyone's hypertension and hyperlipidemia, and the gastrenterologists can see all of those cases of diarrhea.
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