I am not posting this to worry anybody, but it is important that students know the current state of residency (graduate medical education) training in the US. I haven't been on ValueMD for several years, so I'm not sure if this has gone around. Watch this video on vimeo:
vimeo.com/77727683 - I can't posts links. Maybe somebody else can repost this?
The Dean of a local medical school (where I served for residency), visited our group practice and shared his concerns about eventually not having enough training facilities to train all of the physicians we are creating. That is not to say we are graduating too many physicians, but that we are not simultaneously creating more residency spots. For those of you who don't know, residents salaries (about $52,000 avg R1-3) are paid through DHS, mostly Medicare, right now. Clearly, medicare is on its way to going broke and can't pay for thousands of new resident spots that are needed.
US Medical Schools are anxiously trying to come up with different ways of training residents that is less expensive so they can spread the same dollars to more residents. Some of the ideas include farming the residents out to private multi-physician group practices (that is why he came to our office -- to introduce the concept).
What does this mean to US Citizen Ross Students? Nothing immediate. However, with the DO schools springing up in many states, you are competing with more of them now than ever. Accordingly, you'll need to work harder than ever, score higher than ever, and be more professional during your rotations and interviews than ever before. Its a call to "Step it up." Primary care positions will continue to be easier to get into (as compared to the sub-specialty fields) until the US medical system fixes the inequality of pay between sub-specialists and Primary Care. However, primary care is also being challenged by mid-level providers such as nurses and physician assistants who are less expensive and have been allowed to do most of the same tasks as a primary care physician. There has even been the suggestion by legislators (unsuccessful thus far) to call them "physicians". Since nurses and therapists are already using a doctoral level degrees as their entry-level degree the title of Doctor has already been minimized -- although for the most part they are not yet using the professional title "Dr".
It is an interesting time for those of us have chosen medicine as a career. Just remember why you are at Ross -- because you weren't going to let anybody stand in the way of your dream. You (we) chose to leave our homeland to go to an unknown country and need to keep fighting and pushing and crawling and not taking "no" until you reach the goal. You have chosen a school with a good reputation of 10k graduates who have done it before you. Pretty much all residency directors know and have experienced Ross graduates. Ross will give you the chance and all the tools needed to be a physician - but the rest is up to you.
Be inspired, not scared.
Merry Christmas,
MitchDCMD
RUSM 2006
(Sorry for what sounds like a high school graduation speech)
vimeo.com/77727683 - I can't posts links. Maybe somebody else can repost this?
The Dean of a local medical school (where I served for residency), visited our group practice and shared his concerns about eventually not having enough training facilities to train all of the physicians we are creating. That is not to say we are graduating too many physicians, but that we are not simultaneously creating more residency spots. For those of you who don't know, residents salaries (about $52,000 avg R1-3) are paid through DHS, mostly Medicare, right now. Clearly, medicare is on its way to going broke and can't pay for thousands of new resident spots that are needed.
US Medical Schools are anxiously trying to come up with different ways of training residents that is less expensive so they can spread the same dollars to more residents. Some of the ideas include farming the residents out to private multi-physician group practices (that is why he came to our office -- to introduce the concept).
What does this mean to US Citizen Ross Students? Nothing immediate. However, with the DO schools springing up in many states, you are competing with more of them now than ever. Accordingly, you'll need to work harder than ever, score higher than ever, and be more professional during your rotations and interviews than ever before. Its a call to "Step it up." Primary care positions will continue to be easier to get into (as compared to the sub-specialty fields) until the US medical system fixes the inequality of pay between sub-specialists and Primary Care. However, primary care is also being challenged by mid-level providers such as nurses and physician assistants who are less expensive and have been allowed to do most of the same tasks as a primary care physician. There has even been the suggestion by legislators (unsuccessful thus far) to call them "physicians". Since nurses and therapists are already using a doctoral level degrees as their entry-level degree the title of Doctor has already been minimized -- although for the most part they are not yet using the professional title "Dr".
It is an interesting time for those of us have chosen medicine as a career. Just remember why you are at Ross -- because you weren't going to let anybody stand in the way of your dream. You (we) chose to leave our homeland to go to an unknown country and need to keep fighting and pushing and crawling and not taking "no" until you reach the goal. You have chosen a school with a good reputation of 10k graduates who have done it before you. Pretty much all residency directors know and have experienced Ross graduates. Ross will give you the chance and all the tools needed to be a physician - but the rest is up to you.
Be inspired, not scared.
Merry Christmas,
MitchDCMD
RUSM 2006
(Sorry for what sounds like a high school graduation speech)