"So why is there a waning interest to grow a career as a physician? A recent report from the Association of American Medical Colleges projected a shortage of between 42,600 and 121,300 physicians by 2030, up from its 2017 projected shortage of 40,800 to 104,900 doctors.
There appear to be two main factors driving this anticipated doctor drought, as it were: Firstly, young people are becoming less interested in pursuing medical careers with the rise of STEM jobs, a shift that Craig Fowler, regional VP of The Medicus Firm, a national physician search and consulting agency based in Dallas, has noticed." ,
This is not news. Doctors have been leaving, retiring and fewer students have been pursuing medicine for a variety of factors- especially the long hours, insurance and paperwork hassles, reduced reimbursement, fewer able to be in solo practice and the unreasonable expectations of large, often hospital or corporate owned practices. Yay for NYU for starting free medical school. Its a start.
But then isn’t the pipeline of making more physicians limited by the number of spots in medical schools and residencies (which are expensive and hard to increase)? So if more physicians leave the profession, it may not be that easy to get increase the number of new physicians to replace them (it is not that there is a lack of aspiring physicians, but the vast majority of them get weeded out because medical school is so selective).
But don’t overseas physicians (or US physicians graduating from overseas medical schools) still have to go through the bottleneck of US residency before practicing in the US? If so, then the supply cannot be increased without increasing the number of US residency spots.
I don’t buy it. New med schools have been adding physicians every day, probably increased in the 40% range over the 20-30 years time span. The GPA/Mcat requirements for med school admission is rising from 3.5 to 3.7 or even higher level, meaning more students are interested in premed and competitions have heated up.
While it is true that more barriers for physicians to be successful, such as long education process, high insurance, less private practice and increase law suits. But the interest in med school has never subsided. Physicians are still long term stable wage earner.