RESIDENCY CRUNCH! Or not?

[DOwnage]

This whole medical school expansion trend is very intriguing to me and I wanted to know what my fellow SDNer's think about it from a residency standpoint.

I understand the complaints about lack of residency expansion despite the infusion of new students. Looking at the 2009 NRMP statistics though on page 13, you can see that at the bottom, the grand total of unfilled slots = 1,146. On top of that, ~3000 slots are taken up by Non-US IMG's. I'm not hating on IMG's, but if the US government is financing the residencies, they are likely axe Non-US IMG spots and give those spots to Americans. Once again, not hating, just stating what I believe to be the situation.

With class sizes expanding, we all hear about the impending residency crunch...is there really going to be a residency crunch for US MD and US DO since we a) already have a bunch of unfilled spots and b) the government would likely take less foreign IMG's in favor of US MD and DO?

Does the residency crunch only exist for Non-US IMG?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[LuciusVorenus]

I think it probably differs by specialty. For example, how many of the top surgical specialties (ortho, neuro, plastics, etc.) are filled by IMGs or go unfilled? Probably not that many. New med schools will probably increase competition for those slots and make them much more competitive. For less competitive residencies that haves lots unfilled spots or spots filled with IMGs, it probably won't make much of a difference.

 

[Kid A]

Yea, I mean the purpose of the new schools and increasing the number of spots at other schools is to produce new US trained physicians, but not more physicians. The main crunch will be felt by IMG's as they will match less and less every year with the new us schools.

For non-competitive specialties, I doubt there will be much of a difference maybe for the most sought after residencies. The competitive ones, well those will be that much harder to get into just because of more us students able to get them.