These days, most every medical student wants to specialize in something. There are good reasons for this, including the challenge a specialization presents, the prestige involved, and higher pay. This country certainly needs specialists because of the growth in complex chronic conditions (e.g., heart disease, diabetes, and autism), but one has to wonder what this does to our system if we have most medical students choosing to specialize. What are your thoughts?
It is difficult and unfair to ask medical student to change their decisions and become a primary care physicians though we found a need to have more PCPs. However, medical schools could give their students a very detailed and clear introduction of what each specialist doctor and PCP do when the students first enter medical school, and have another similar kind's seminar when the students were about to choose their professions/specialties. From the seminars we could emphasized that PCPs are in great need since there is an obvious decline of students wanting to be PCPs. It will help students to pay more attention to the importance and job duties of PCPs, and they might choose to be PCPs if they think it can help the society by having them as gatekeepers.
No comments:
Post a Comment