This is an interesting front-page story from the Feb. 14 Times.
And these letters followed.
Several dilemmas: The country is facing a doctor shortage, particularly in primary care (which has long been trending that way). The population is aging, overall, and not many schools offer that specialty training. With numbers of new patients expected to swell with new health care legislation, more physicians will be needed. And, enough students have sought medical school training abroad (when they couldn't get into U.S. schools), to create even more of a doc shortage.
I agree with one of the letter writers who said medical schools are terribly expensive on start-up; why not just admit a few more people at the existing institutions?
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Good NYT story, Allison and good letters. I particularly agree that we need more gerontologists. When I worked for the Sarasota paper I covered aging and got to know a terrific doc there who specialized in older patients (great location for a gerontologist, huh?) I learned so much from him and felt that he helped his patients enormously compared to the care they could get from doctors not in his specialty. Of course at my age gerontology is appealing anyway.
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