A pilot study by medical students working in collaboration with a healthy aging advocacy group explored the key factors influencing recruitment of primary care professionals. Their findings challenge common assumptions about healthcare recruitment and identify a complex interplay of factors that go into a trainee's decision-making process about where to practice medicine.
The use of interventional pain medicine has been growing over the past few years, offering relief to patients suffering from acute and chronic pain who have failed conservative therapies. Pain is one of the top complaints that family physicians encounter, yet there is no official pain medicine (PM) fellowship or recognized training program that favors family medicine graduates. Although family medicine residency programs allot a certain amount of time to teaching trainees in PM, this is considerably insufficient and does not dedicate ample time for procedural treatments.
As the founder of an edtech company, I've noticed an increasing number of students deciding to pursue MD/MBA programs because they recognize that business acumen is often lacking in healthcare and that addressing this gap can lead to significant improvements. While I'm not saying all aspiring doctors need to take this route, it's clear that today's physicians need to do more than just practice medicine—they are also expected to manage, lead and innovate to provide comprehensive care.
As a physician, I was taught to appreciate the clinical importance of human touch for our physical and mental health. As a human being, I worry about its loss. And as a dermatologist, I know what that loss may mean for the loneliest and most vulnerable among us.
While AI has already had a significant impact in the automation of tedious tasks, the less-explored but tremendous potential to perform reliable diagnosis and treatment will face significant challenges in adoption and model reliability.