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+--- Thread: Article Will there be any emergency doctors to see you in the future? (/thread-13879.html)
Will there be any emergency doctors to see you in the future? - C C - Mar 27, 2023
https://www.statnews.com/2023/03/20/emergency-medicine-residency-positions-unfilled-the-match/
INTRO: In the emergency room today, everyone is suffering. Many emergency medicine physicians are struggling to provide quality care amid staffing shortages, increased pressure to meet productivity metrics, and frustrated patients battling prolonged wait times. Their situation is compounded by a sense that they have been abandoned by hospital leadership, leading to increasing levels of physician burnout and attrition.
Medical students have picked up on the chaos within the emergency medicine physician community — and it’s making them less interested in entering our specialty.
Every year medical students participate in the National Resident Matching Program, or The Match, where students apply for residency positions across specialties. Historically, nearly all emergency medicine residency positions in The Match were filled by applicants, making the field highly competitive to enter. In 2022 emergency medicine saw its first major decrease in applicants, which resulted in 219 unfilled residency positions. In 2023, 3,282 students (down sharply from 4,391 in 2021) applied for 3,010 positions leaving 555 unfilled positions. (Yes, that is still more applicants than positions; it’s a function of the way the Match works.) We are three emergency physicians — and we are worried about the future of the field.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, urgent and emergency department visits were on the rise. With over 130 million visits per year in 2020, hospitals are struggling to provide timely, cost-conscious, high-quality care to their patients. As a possible bridge to this gap, many hospitals have expanded their use of advanced practice providers like nurse practitioners and physician assistants, and staffing groups have sought to grow the number of emergency medicine doctors by increasing the number and size of training programs. While we used to be hopeful that reinforcements were coming, the 2023 Match results made it clear that this is no longer the case... (MORE - details)