So much for the "unprecedented numbers of applicants" this year.

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I figured as much - with the economy as bad as it was this year, I had my doubts whether it was the right time to pile on more loans, but with my time off I knew I wanted to get into this path - I think a lot of youngins would consider taking a break and having fun while making money

Another somewhat pertinent article on med student burnout:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/health/chen10-30.html?_r=1&ref=health&oref=slogin
 
HumidBeing said:
It appears that we cannot read the article unless we pay to subscribe. 🙁
Click to expand...

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Medical-School Applications Dip for the First Time in 6 Years

By KATHERINE MANGAN

After five years of application increases, the number of students applying to the nation’s medical schools slipped 3 percent this year, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Association of American Medical Colleges. The drop came at a time when medical schools were being urged to accept more students to stave off a projected shortage of physicians.

Nonetheless, the schools increased their combined enrollments by 2 percent over 2007, largely because of the addition of three new medical-school campuses, established by Mercer University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Arizona. Nationwide, first-year enrollment is now about 18,000, the highest in history.

“America’s medical schools are continuing to increase their enrollment, which is absolutely critical as our population grows and ages,” said Darrell G. Kirch, president and chief executive of the medical-colleges association, in a news conference on Tuesday.

The association has called on medical schools to increase enrollment by 30 percent by 2015, compared with 2002 levels, by expanding existing schools and opening new campuses. It has also been working aggressively to try to attract more members of minority groups to the profession.

A Continuing Call for Expansion

Those efforts drew mixed results this year. Applications among Latino students were up 3 percent, partly because of the opening of new campuses in regions with large Latino populations. However, the number of black and Native American applicants dropped by 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively. Women represented about 48 percent of this year’s applicants, down slightly from 49 percent in 2007.

Richard A Cooper, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and leading expert on the physician work force, said he was troubled by the application drop. Based on demographics alone, the number of applications should increase until 2010, when he predicted they would peak and start to decline. “We need to be expanding faster than we are,” he said, "and the fact that applications are down is bad news. "

Dr. Kirch played down this year's drop, pointing out that it followed five years of increases.

The figures released on Tuesday were for the nation’s 130 allopathic medical schools, which grant M.D. degrees. Applications were up 2.5 percent this year at the 24 osteopathic medical colleges and branch campuses, which grant D.O. degrees. The two kinds of medical schools follow similar curricula, but osteopathic schools emphasize holistic practices and often train students to manipulate muscles and joints to treat disorders and diseases.

The American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine reported that a record 11,742 people applied to its schools this year. According to the medical-colleges group, 42,231 people applied to allopathic medical schools. (There is some overlap in those numbers because some students apply to both kinds of schools.)

High-Quality Applicants

Even though those medical schools accepted more applicants from a slightly smaller pool this year, Dr. Kirch said the quality of first-year students remained high. "There are still more than two applicants for every available seat in medical school," he said. This year's applicants also had higher undergraduate grades and scores on the Medical College Admission Test, as well as more community-service and research experience, Dr. Kirch noted.

He cautioned that graduating more medical students is just part of the solution to what the association projects could be a shortage of physicians as baby boomers age. The nation also needs to pay for more residency programs, he said. Those programs, which typically last three to seven years, allow medical-school graduates to receive on-the-job training in their specialties at a hospital or clinic. The number of positions that Medicare pays for has been frozen at 1996 levels, although some hospitals and clinics have used their own or state money to expand their programs (The Chronicle, October 24).

While a growing number of medical schools are opening their doors to more students, a few schools are bucking the trend. The University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine plans to reduce its average class size to 88 from 112 per year by the fall of 2009.

Officials at Chicago and some other medical schools believe that the problem is not the overall supply of physicians, but how they are distributed—too few in rural and inner-city areas and not enough pursuing careers in primary care. Chicago officials cited statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services predicting that the supply of physicians in the United States was expected to rise to an all-time high, from 200 doctors per 100,000 people in 1980 to 293 per 100,000 in 2010.

Smaller class sizes will allow the medical school to focus more on providing mentors to students and opportunities for hands-on learning, officials said.

“This is a way to address the maldistribution of physicians and make a clear investment in both our community and our graduates,” said Holly J. Humphrey, Chicago's dean for medical education.

The medical school is located in Chicago's South Side, a chronically underserved area whose residents have higher-than-average rates of diseases like hypertension, diabetes, and asthma.

The medical school has also announced a plan intended to make it affordable for students to practice in the South Side even though medical-school graduates carry an average debt load of $140,000. The school will offer a $40,000 stipend, for up to four years, and will initially supplement the salaries of up to five of the approximately 100 students it graduates each year if they work in that neighborhood.

Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
 
Thank you. Allo applications are down and osteo are up. Interesting. Fewer applications received, but stronger overall applications. It sounds like the schools have a strong pool from which to select, and we continue to have far more well qualified applicants than seats available. I wonder what the application stats for pharmacy schools will show this year, and which fields are most likely to draw those who would have otherwise applied to medical schools. I also wonder how the average number of applications submitted per applicant may be shifting.
 
sunset823 said:
Chicago officials cited statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services predicting that the supply of physicians in the United States was expected to rise to an all-time high, from 200 doctors per 100,000 people in 1980 to 293 per 100,000 in 2010.
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😕😕😕 Really? I keep hearing how there will be a doctor shortage...
 
heard the same - maybe all those new docs will be concentrated in the cities? 😕
 
Well, there were apparently 4.3 million babies born last year. Assuming there are about 20000 people admitted to med school each year, a high estimate, we're maintaining roughly 1 new doctor for every 215 new people. That's 465 doctors per 100000 people. I suppose it's believable the ratio will increase that dramatically.
 
Although the overall number of apps may be down, it does seem that people are applying earlier. I remember BU saying over a month ago that their apps were up a lot, and SUNY Downstate said theirs were up 9% (both explaining why their processing times were so slow). And I've been astonished how fast a lot of schools seem to be using up their interview slots. Many schools with high app volume (like NYMC and Albany) are currently giving out LATE FEB interviews. I myself just got an invite at a SUNY school, and the earliest date I could get was Feb 17th--and this school only interviews through March.

Early bird gets the worm indeed.
 
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I think the "doctor shortage" issue deals with primary care and rural/under served areas. In other words, there're plenty of doctors, but they aren't spread evenly.
 
sunset823 said:
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Even though those medical schools accepted more applicants from a slightly smaller pool this year, Dr. Kirch said the quality of first-year students remained high. "There are still more than two applicants for every available seat in medical school," he said. This year's applicants also had higher undergraduate grades and scores on the Medical College Admission Test, as well as more community-service and research experience, Dr. Kirch noted.
Click to expand...

*gulp*
 
sunset823 said:
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Medical-School Applications Dip for the First Time in 6 Years

By KATHERINE MANGAN


High-Quality Applicants

Even though those medical schools accepted more applicants from a slightly smaller pool this year, Dr. Kirch said the quality of first-year students remained high. "There are still more than two applicants for every available seat in medical school," he said. This year's applicants also had higher undergraduate grades and scores on the Medical College Admission Test, as well as more community-service and research experience, Dr. Kirch noted.
Click to expand...

What this means to me is that more people are taking the MCAT and thinking about med school, but also better information is getting out there about what kinds of numbers it takes to get in, i.e., schools may be seeing less people with a 24 and a 3.3 randomly throwing their application out there. If more people overall are taking the MCAT, that means more people with high, 30+ scores overall as well, and then if more of the sub-30 scorers are electing to not apply, this could lead to an overall decrease in raw numbers of applications while increasing the number of "competitive" applications.
 
student1799 said:
Although the overall number of apps may be down, it does seem that people are applying earlier. I remember BU saying over a month ago that their apps were up a lot, and SUNY Downstate said theirs were up 9% (both explaining why their processing times were so slow). And I've been astonished how fast a lot of schools seem to be using up their interview slots. Many schools with high app volume (like NYMC and Albany) are currently giving out LATE FEB interviews. I myself just got an invite at a SUNY school, and the earliest date I could get was Feb 17th--and this school only interviews through March.

Early bird gets the worm indeed.
Click to expand...

I'm willing to bet that along with the trend in applying early, there is also a trend for applicants to apply to a lot of schools. Just looking at the md apps, I rarely see someone who applied to fewer than 15 schools. I have a feeling there will be more waitlist movement this year as a result.
 
MilkmanAl said:
Well, there were apparently 4.3 million babies born last year. Assuming there are about 20000 people admitted to med school each year, a high estimate, we're maintaining roughly 1 new doctor for every 215 new people. That's 465 doctors per 100000 people. I suppose it's believable the ratio will increase that dramatically.
Click to expand...
Except that a number of doctors retire every year as well.

But then of course, lots of foreign trained physicians finish residency...
 
One reason there is a greater need for doctors. The US is an aging society (baby boomers etc) and is going to require more medical care.
 
JDOC13 said:
And a number of patients...expire every year, as well.
Click to expand...
True. What we'd need to look at is net gain in doctors (preferably physicians finishing residency-physicians retiring, as that takes into account DOs and foreign grads as well) versus net gain in population (birth rate-death rate). Course, the data for the first part is rather difficult to come by....
 
sunset823 said:
I figured as much - with the economy as bad as it was this year, I had my doubts whether it was the right time to pile on more loans, but with my time off I knew I wanted to get into this path - I think a lot of youngins would consider taking a break and having fun while making money

Another somewhat pertinent article on med student burnout:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/health/chen10-30.html?_r=1&ref=health&oref=slogin
Click to expand...

Yea, I had a feeling that all this earlier talk about the "unprecedented number" of applicants this year was gonna be a bunch of BS. There were more people who applying earlier this year, which is probably why some people thought that this year was gonna be another "unprecendented" year. The "unprecedented number" of applicants was last year people. Btw, thank you sunset823, for posting that article for us to read. It was very enlightening.
 
Demas567 said:
The "unprecedented number" of applicants was last year people.
Click to expand...

Actually the AAMC data for total applicants from 1996-2007 is:

1996: 46,965
1997: 43,016
1998: 40,996
1999: 38,443
2000: 37,088
2001: 34,860
2002: 33,625
2003: 34,791
2004: 35,735
2005: 37,373
2006: 39,108
2007: 42,315
 
I would figure there would be lots more applicants next cycle because of the economy..
 
TheElement said:
I would figure there would be lots more applicants next cycle because of the economy..
Click to expand...

Because of the pre-reqs, it is a 2 year ramp up at the least, really 3 with the MCAT and glide year. You can't simply decide to apply because you have no job prospects. I think that if you see this, it will be the year after next.

Law school, I can imagine, is going to be BRUTAL this year, as you can apply with any BA.
 
BTC said:
I'm willing to bet that along with the trend in applying early, there is also a trend for applicants to apply to a lot of schools. Just looking at the md apps, I rarely see someone who applied to fewer than 15 schools. I have a feeling there will be more waitlist movement this year as a result.
Click to expand...

I agree with this, I think its a very good point. The easy accessability of the online application services allows people to really spread the net wide. While the number of applicants may be within the same range, I'm curious to see what the total number of applications recieved by all the schools is compared to years past. I would bet that is higher.
 
TheElement said:
I would figure there would be lots more applicants next cycle because of the economy..
Click to expand...

It's going to be the opposite. There will be less applicants. The way the loans are set up it's going to take at least 2 years to get it back together. The economy will hurt the number of applicants for other reasons as well... It's not cheap to go to med school, and sometimes if you're stripped for cash pharmacy school might seem quicker and cheaper, just an example.
 
While the major shift won't happen because of timing pre-reqs, it has to influence some of the people that are undecided.

I'm not too familiar with med school loans but how are they set up? I figured most people would have to go through the loan route to finance med school.
 
BTC said:
I'm willing to bet that along with the trend in applying early, there is also a trend for applicants to apply to a lot of schools. Just looking at the md apps, I rarely see someone who applied to fewer than 15 schools. I have a feeling there will be more waitlist movement this year as a result.
Click to expand...

keep in mind you ARE looking at mdapps......where students with 3.9/35 apply to 30 schools b/c theyve only had 1 publication so want to make sure they arent spreading themsleves thin.
 
Bump for the loans.
 
ryserr21 said:
keep in mind you ARE looking at mdapps......where students with 3.9/35 apply to 30 schools b/c theyve only had 1 publication so want to make sure they arent spreading themsleves thin.
Click to expand...
Second this...I know plenty of ppl that applied to less than 5 schools.
 
pianola said:
😕😕😕 Really? I keep hearing how there will be a doctor shortage...
Click to expand...

just because there are more doctors does not mean that there cannot be a shortage. If the number of patients rise greater than the number of doctor, then there will be a shortage (assuming there was not an original oversupply of doctors).
 
Wylde said:
just because there are more doctors does not mean that there cannot be a shortage. If the number of patients rise greater than the number of doctor, then there will be a shortage (assuming there was not an original oversupply of doctors).
Click to expand...

Ah yes. Therein lies my error in logic. Thanks.
 
pianola said:
Ah yes. Therein lies my error in logic. Thanks.
Click to expand...
That and theres a lot more things for doctors to be doing now than in years past. Used to be all your equipment and medications fit in your little black bag... So even if there aren't a lot more patients, theres more to do for the ones you do have.
 
I believe the reason for the projected doctor shortage is that doctors are retiring much younger these days than they used to. (If you're feeling stressed out by fighting with insurance companies all the time, there's less incentive to keep going until you're 70.) Given the age of the current physician population, there could be a wave of retirements in the next decade or so, which--when coupled with the dramatic drop in medical student enrollments from 1996-2001--could produce a shortage.
 
This information makes my lack if interviews both more surprising and more frustrating. 🙁 I had previously considered the "unprecedented" number of applicants a reason I haven't been hearing much yet. *sigh* Hopefully the flood of early applications just means more interview opportunities are coming, but later in the cycle.
 
student1799 said:
I believe the reason for the projected doctor shortage is that doctors are retiring much younger these days than they used to. (If you're feeling stressed out by fighting with insurance companies all the time, there's less incentive to keep going until you're 70.) Given the age of the current physician population, there could be a wave of retirements in the next decade or so, which--when coupled with the dramatic drop in medical student enrollments from 1996-2001--could produce a shortage.
Click to expand...

Is there a drop in medical student enrollment? I was under the impression that medical student enrollment is slowly increasing (with exceptions like Pritzker) but medical student applicants are decreasing.

Frankly, I'm not surprised that fewer people are applying to medical school as the years go on. It's not a friendly process. It costs a boatload of time, money, and sanity. Many who apply (and are qualified) will not get in anywhere. If you are lucky enough to get in, cost of attendance is a huge deterrent. While some schools are smartly increasing the number of 1st year seats, in my opinion, it is not happening as fast or as extensively as necessary to ameliorate the projected doctor shortage. The problem does not lie with a decreasing number of applicants, as there will always be more qualified people who want to go to medical school than are accepted into medical school. Rather, part of this looming issue can be blamed on medical schools not increasing their enrollments and resources fast enough.
 
Well what worries me even more is that while med schools are theoretically attempting to increase enrollment, residency spots are staying the same. For now we're still ok (there were still more residencies than students last year, and international grads made up the difference) but it's not impossible to imagine that soon we won't have enough residency spots for all US-grad med students. And that would just be a total disaster. Unfortunately Medicare funds residency spots, and they have had the same number since time immemorial, and it doesn't look like they'll have a surplus of money to fund more anytime soon. So while it'd be certainly nice for people in our position to have more spots open up in med schools-- if these spots aren't matched at least to some extent by an increase in residency spots, we'll be dealing with even worse competition later on- and an inability to pay back our loans (*shudder*).
 
Won't happen for a long while. (US grads not finding spots that is) Fully one-third of residency spots are going to foreign grads, though those might not be as desirable as a lot of spots. Thats the thing though, we still have a lot more foreign grads who want to be doctors than we have spots, so increasing enrollment won't change the total number of physicians at all.

You're right in that the only way to address any potential shortages is to increase residency spots, but the # of those funded by medicare has bene frozen since 1996. Theres been a mild increase of spots funded by individual states since then, but definitely not enough.
 
I think a physician shortage stems from the fact that we have an aging population that continues to get larger and larger, and this population requires an extraordinary amount of medical care. In the past, the elderly (>65 or so?) population was a small % of the overall US population, and while they required more medical care there wasn't an overwhelming number of them. Now, because of some pretty good science and technology, as well as a bunch of babies after WWII, the elderly population is growing at an amazing rate. The over 85 population is the fastest growing in the US. So even though the physician to total population ratio might be holding steady or even improving, the physician to person who needs a lot of medical care ratio is shrinking.
 
Agreed. There are a lot more issues involved though. It has been touched on some earlier in the thread but two of the biggest problems regarding the supply of physicians are the abundance of specialists/lack of primary care doctors and the uneven geographic distribution of physicians. Physician supply is a very difficult topic to address as there are many factors that play into it. Here are some to give a better idea:

1) It takes a long time to educate a larger population of physicians thus predicting future need is a necessary part of the equation. However, need is not necessarily a linear trend and it is difficult to predict this value is it is dependent on so many other factors (technology, disease trends i.e. obesity -> diabetes, etc.) Funny thing is increasing in technology usually require more doctors because they create new subspecialities.

2) The supply of physicians right now is very geographically uneven. Some areas such as Boston may have as many as 300 physicians per 100,000 while others such as Idaho may only have 100 docs per 100,000. For each population, there is an ideal ratio of docs/population (speculated to be somewhere around 190 per 100,000). Any number higher than that could create a supply-driven demand (i.e. lots of surgeons do lots of surgeries to maintain their income, whether the procedures are necessary or not). Any number lower than the ideal ratio is not meeting the need of the population, which is bad. Increasing the number of medical school grads will not solve this problem. Docs are still going to go to the places they want to and in many ways, this could exacerbate the problem.

3) The elderly population will take it's toll on the medical system and so we are rightfully preparing for it. Arguably a larger impact will be the obesity epidemic that is sweeping the nation. Obesity -> chronic disease such as type II diabetes and coronary heart disease which place a huge burden on the health care system. 70% of premature deaths are related to modifiable health behaviors 😱 It is well-known that preventive approaches are the best way to address these illnesses but with diminutive primary care population...who is going to deliver this care? These are issues we still don't entirely understand so it is very difficult to assess how many doctors we will need to address these health concerns....and if we can determine this, how do you get them to enter primary care? Same issue as the location, increasing the number of med students will not necessarily lead to increased population of primary care physicians.

It is a very complex issue...yes, AAMC has called for an increase in the number of medical students but will this fix the problem? Also wondering, is there actually a physician shortage?

SORRY FOR THE LONG POST
 
linguini said:
Is there a drop in medical student enrollment? I was under the impression that medical student enrollment is slowly increasing (with exceptions like Pritzker) but medical student applicants are decreasing.
Click to expand...

I stand corrected there. Yes, I was thinking of the drop in applications (which fell by about 1/3 from '96 to '01), but enrollments stayed approximately the same during that time. (I think they did decline a little, because some school eliminated seats from their classes in that period--seats which the AMA is now pressuring schools to restore.)
 
ButImLETired said:
Wow, must have been rough to be applying in 1996...
Click to expand...
lol, yea '96 must have suckd

also, i don't think ppl are losing interest or anything, i think more and more people are putting off applications and applying after they graduate (to improve their chances or just take a break). and that fits with the increasing age of med school matriculants and the increase in quality of the pool.
 
Does this have any implication as to the likelihood of me getting accepted off one of my 3 WL's?
 
sorry if my post sounds ignorant - I don't read as much as I should about these topics...but i'm really curious about something:

why the heck would the AMA be asking for more doctors? Doesn't it benefit us that there's a shortage? Look at all the unemployed lawyers, or even take a look at the pharmacy forum here on SDN, and look at how many people are complaining about being unable to find a decent job... too many schools are churning them out - that's why... Shouldn't the AMA be fighting to keep us employed?
 
phospho said:
sorry if my post sounds ignorant - I don't read as much as I should about these topics...but i'm really curious about something:

why the heck would the AMA be asking for more doctors? Doesn't it benefit us that there's a shortage? Look at all the unemployed lawyers, or even take a look at the pharmacy forum here on SDN, and look at how many people are complaining about being unable to find a decent job... too many schools are churning them out - that's why... Shouldn't the AMA be fighting to keep us employed?
Click to expand...

It may benefit us future doctors in terms of job security but it definitely isn't benefiting patients. I would certainly hope that the AMA's concern stems from the fact that today many patients suffer not being able to see physicians, long waits for appointments/procedures, overworked and overbooked physicians, etc. If Obama is successful in insuring more citizens without an increase in doctors, this problem is only going to be exacerbated. It makes sense that the solution would be to increase the # of physicians.
 
OnlyNeedOneYes said:
Does this have any implication as to the likelihood of me getting accepted off one of my 3 WL's?
Click to expand...

I doubt it.

The suggestion is that the drop in applicants reflects a drop off in lower stats folks (and some of them may have moved over to DO apps reflected in their uptick) - I seriously doubt if there has been a drop off in the more qualified applicants.

If I am correct, the median stats for applicants should reflect an upward trend this year...median matriculant stats may go up a bit, too, as a result...
 
flip26 said:
I doubt it.

The suggestion is that the drop in applicants reflects a drop off in lower stats folks (and some of them may have moved over to DO apps reflected in their uptick) - I seriously doubt if there has been a drop off in the more qualified applicants.

If I am correct, the median stats for applicants should reflect an upward trend this year...median matriculant stats may go up a bit, too, as a result...
Click to expand...

gotcha. thanks.
 
phospho said:
sorry if my post sounds ignorant - I don't read as much as I should about these topics...but i'm really curious about something:

why the heck would the AMA be asking for more doctors? Doesn't it benefit us that there's a shortage? Look at all the unemployed lawyers, or even take a look at the pharmacy forum here on SDN, and look at how many people are complaining about being unable to find a decent job... too many schools are churning them out - that's why... Shouldn't the AMA be fighting to keep us employed?
Click to expand...

An increase in medical school seats only increases the number of American medical grads. There are still many spots in residencies that are taken up by FMGs. Unless the number of residency spots changes, the number of physicians produced each year will stay the same -> only the ratio of American grads to FMGs will increase by increasing seats in American medical schools.

There is also a projection for a massive shortage to hit once baby boomers retire. Aging populations need more care due to high prevalence of chronic conditions and greater susceptibility to injuries. There will not likely be an overabundance of physicians any time soon.
 
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