Why well-qualified medical school graduates can’t get jobs — despite doctor shortages

[millefleur 5,047]

As a fourth-year medical student, Adrienne Green recently found herself facing what she says her peers might call “a nuclear-level disaster.”

 

Green is an aspiring vascular surgeon who expects to graduate from Loma Linda University’s medical school in California this May. For most students like her, graduation isn’t the end — it’s really just the beginning. After medical school, newly minted physicians usually join hospital-based residency programs, where they complete anywhere between three to nine years of on-the-job training before becoming fully licensed independent practitioners.

 

The problem facing Green was that the computer algorithm intended to pair her with a residency program had left her empty-handed: Like more than 2,000 of her graduating peers across the country, she hadn’t matched, leaving her — at least temporarily — without a clear path to becoming a surgeon. “To get through the pipeline, and not find a job, is a bit jarring,” she said.

 

Read more here:  https://www.vox.com/22989930/residency-match-physician-doctor-shortage-pandemic-medical-school

[TBoneTX 45,447]

That sucks.

[millefleur 5,047]

It's a lose/lose situation for everyone. We can't even import doctors from abroad because they have to go through the same requirements as a fresh grad, it's overkill. We need reform badly in this area.

 

It’s easy to imagine a simple solution for this problem: Incentivizing doctors from other countries to immigrate to the US. But this is not as quick a fix as it seems. Most states require doctors to complete residency training in the US, which takes at least three years. That applies even for doctors who practiced independently at expert levels in other countries; the chief of surgery at the fanciest hospital in India would still have to repeat residency in order to practice in the US.

[TBoneTX 45,447]

Years ago, I briefly dated an asylum refugee from Russia.  She was a dermatologist there.  Here, she found work as a phlebotomist.

[Neonred 3,573]

I've got a friend (close friend of one of my dental hygienists) who was also a hygienist.  Five years ago she started medical school...in one of the non-US schools in the Caribbean.  Last year she did NOT get a match for her residency.  She wants to practice family medicine.  She has gone through some depression and hard times this past year.  Fortunately she was able to fall back and do hygiene for much of this time.  Seems this is a common problem for students that did not attend a US medical school.

 

She tried to get a residency again with this years match.  Just this week she learned she did get a match but it was in pediatrics, which was her last choice. She really has to take it or wait another year.

 

Dentists now also have to do the match program IF they opt to specialize or do a general practice residency.  Was not that why when I went to school, and in fact I did a general practice residency followed by a prosthodontic residency.  My daughter did have to do the match when she did her pediatric dental residency (in Milwaukee WI).

 

I also have a close friend from Uzbekistan that was a dentist there prior to coming to the US.  He worked for me doing hygiene prior to going back to dental school here to get his DDS degree.  By passing the written parts of the dental National Board Exam he was able to skip the first two years of dental school.  He now practices in the Boston area.

[Dashinka 24,577]

22 minutes ago, Neonred said:

I've got a friend (close friend of one of my dental hygienists) who was also a hygienist.  Five years ago she started medical school...in one of the non-US schools in the Caribbean.  Last year she did NOT get a match for her residency.  She wants to practice family medicine.  She has gone through some depression and hard times this past year.  Fortunately she was able to fall back and do hygiene for much of this time.  Seems this is a common problem for students that did not attend a US medical school.

 

She tried to get a residency again with this years match.  Just this week she learned she did get a match but it was in pediatrics, which was her last choice. She really has to take it or wait another year.

 

Dentists now also have to do the match program IF they opt to specialize or do a general practice residency.  Was not that why when I went to school, and in fact I did a general practice residency followed by a prosthodontic residency.  My daughter did have to do the match when she did her pediatric dental residency (in Milwaukee WI).

 

I also have a close friend from Uzbekistan that was a dentist there prior to coming to the US.  He worked for me doing hygiene prior to going back to dental school here to get his DDS degree.  By passing the written parts of the dental National Board Exam he was able to skip the first two years of dental school.  He now practices in the Boston area.

That is a shame as we really need more family practice physicians.  

[TBoneTX 45,447]

A dentist married a manicurist.  They've been fighting tooth and nail ever since.