Attracting Med Students to Primary Care
This leads to a broader question: How do we create an environment beyond tuition that encourages more students to go into internal medicine, pediatrics, or family medicine?
Right now, across those three specialties, the average salary is $250,000, which is lower than in other subspecialties. There’s a high amount of administrative workload, loss of autonomy, and plenty of burnout. You want to get more students to go into primary care? We need to fix primary care.
That involves many factors. Get ready for this. I actually had to make a list based on what I’ve read in articles and heard from my colleagues.
If we want to attract more students to primary care, we need to talk about:
- Improving reimbursement;
- Better mental health support;
- Highlighting the importance primary care plays in public health;
- Expanding care teams;
- Creating more medical students and training sites in rural and underserved areas;
- Expanding the use of telehealth services;
- Creating early exposure programs for high school and college students; and
- Paying attention to how local policies and statistics, such as crime, housing, and abortion bans, may push people away from practicing in certain areas or states.
Clearly, this is a large number of considerations that goes far beyond the altruistic tuition-free gifts.
Look, it’s no surprise we have a physician shortage that affects multiple specialties, but it is alarming that by 2034, there’s going to be an estimated shortage of 50,000 primary care doctors.
Stay Tuned
What do you all think? Is free tuition enough to actually move the needle in the long term, or should NYU have made a more focused gift? Comment below.
I know what you’re all wondering why I didn’t talk about tuition waivers in terms of diversifying the student body. That’s because that deserves its own video. Stay tuned for part 2.
Dr. Patel is a pediatric hospitalist, television producer, media contributor, and digital health enthusiast. He splits his time between New York City and San Francisco, as he is on faculty at Columbia University/Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. He hosts The Hospitalist Retort video blog on Medscape.
Dr. Patel has disclosed the following relevant financial relationships: serve(d) as a director, officer, partner, employee, advisor, consultant, or trustee for Medumo Inc.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.