The Incredible Shrinking Residency Crisis

Episode 91: There aren’t enough residency positions for graduating medical students? It depends on the state; the forecast is grim.

Download transcript: Stop Cutting Residency Positions

 More Medical Students Than Residency Positions

As you may know and have probably heard there is becoming an increasing discrepancy between the number of graduating medical students and the number of positions available for internships in residences.

It’s a terrible thing to be in medical school graduate and be unemployed and not be able to get a job. This is a disturbing topic. I’ve had a considerable amount of fought before doing a podcast because I wanted to make sure I got my numbers right.

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Texas’ Medical Student Projection

Now, I’ve finally found a graph. It’s not national but it will give you an idea. I want to give you a sample from Texas and if you could find a better reference nationally to give you this specific data please give it to me and I will certainly share it again with the podcasted community. The text is hospital association in Texas Higher Education coordinating board. Hosted a forum, they got a couple of million dollars to establish new first year residency positions.

In 2012, they had a report that is available online and they said it already in 2014 there were 63 less slots available for graduating medical schools compared to the number of 4th year graduating Texas doctors. Let me be real clear what I’m saying here.

A lot of people will go to a different state to apply and attend a residency. A lot of U.S. citizens or even foreign nationals, they go to medical schools outside of the United States. What we’re talking about now is a coming crisis where people graduating in medical school within their own state can’t even get a job. Even if they all stayed in the same state, they’re being forced to go elsewhere.

Florida Grows Medical Schools – Not Residencies

Florida is actually the worst. There are medical schools popping up everywhere and this goes back several years when the AAMC said, “Hey, we need to boost the number of medical school graduates by 30%.” Texas did that but the residency growth is much slower and more expensive, believe it or not, than a medical school and its rate has only been 15% growth since then. It’s outpacing it by twice as much and the number of graduating medical schools is quickly overtaking it. This is projected to happen nationally. This is alarming.

You may be experiencing this already, but this has real life implications such as the number of applications you should put in for your residency and the number of interviews you should go to. I think everything is going to start doubling. If you aren’t already just a stellar student then I think you need to double everything right off the bat.

I’ve been down that road, had to switch programs. I know what it feels like to not match. I know what it feels like to match to your number one choice. Man, you need a lock and load on this and go to a lot more residencies if you are below average in your medical school class. That is my advice.

Projections of Unemployed Doctors

By 2016, the number is projected to jump to almost 200. 180 it says here, but I’m looking at the graph that I will include in the show. It’s for this episode. I’ve researched the actual 69 page paper that this council put out and this has happened before which id surprising, a little bit in 2007. It was about 112 more graduates than there were residency slots. That’s not that long ago. It’s happened a little bit before then, but the trajectory from 2014 and 15 and what’s projected on our into the future is much worse.

A lot of this corresponds with the economic recession, that when it dovetailed. The problem is that the government is broke.