Lack of Residency Programs
Introduction
The path to becoming a physician with a license to practice medicine in the United States is a long and difficult process. The process begins with graduating from a medical school, allowing the medical student to become eligible to apply for a residency program. The completion of a residency program can take from three to seven years depending on the chosen specialty. Acceptance to a residency program is guided by a centralized, specialty specific, computerized matching process. Currently the problem of acquiring a residency spot is one of the most important and actual. This problem has several major aspects that should be discussed. The first aspect is the disproportion between the number of medical school graduates and the number of residency spots or places where they can undergo a qualified training after their graduation. Currently, in the USA there are 141 accredited M.D.-granting medical schools.
These institutions provide the undergraduate medical education and prepare physicians-in-training for supervised practice. This supervised practice is very important for the graduates because they receive practical experience which is so necessary for their future career. The graduates also become able to deepen their knowledge in their specialization. Besides, the medical residency system is an indispensible stage of the medical education which was first introduced more than 125 years ago and since that time it has proved its effectiveness. Currently medical school graduates are not allowed to open their own clinics or to practice on their own without a completion of an obligatory on-the-job training period. Though it is required that medical graduates should complete the residency programs, the federal government does not provides enough positions for the graduates.
According to the data provided by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) Specialties Matching Service® in 2015 there were offered “8,503 fellowship positions, and 9,538 applicants participated in at least one of the fellowship Matches. The results show that competition for a fellowship remains high as nearly one-quarter of the residents who applied for fellowships didn’t receive a position” (ama-assn.org., 2015, n.d.). Such scholars as Beck (2013) argue that the residency programs are currently facing a looming shortage of available positions, and with the introduction of the government budget cuts there is a strong tendency towards closing residency programs all over the country. As the researcher points out “medical educators are cautioning that those efforts won't do anything to alleviate a doctor shortage unless the number of medical residency positions rises as well. The number of federally funded residencies has been frozen since 1997” (Beck, 2013, n.d). Furthermore, a limited number of program spots and an increase in foreign applicants significantly increase the risks of being not accepted into the residency program a person chooses as his major choice.
The other aspect that is worth discussing is an ineffective use of the available residency spots by the medical graduates. Currently the United States experiences the shortage of well-qualified medical professionals, especially primary care …
