How can we solve the rural clinician shortage?

I was recently at a meeting where some very influential physicians were discussing a question that I’ve been thinking about for a while: how do we find medical staff for rural emergency rooms and hospitals? It’s a tough question, because, increasingly, it seems that young physicians are trained to work in urban hospitals. Those are also the places these young doctors prefer to practice. Big hospitals and teaching centers in the city. Modern medicine is highly technical and remarkable specialized, so many young docs are very uncomfortable when they have to practice far from “the mother ship” (the term we use to jokingly refer to large referral centers with every specialty under the sun). This discussion of the medical workforce is complicated, but it’s clear that for the foreseeable future, rural hospitals will struggle to get physicians. It’s bad enough that we frequently lack the specialty backup of larger urban centers (just try to find a neurologist or cardiologist outside a large urban area), but we don’t even have all of the advanced technologies that are common elsewhere. You won’t get a coronary stent placed in a small county hospital, for example. Getting highly specialized, cutting-edge care often requires patients be transferred over long distances to larger facilities. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Emergency Medicine Hospital-Based Medicine Source Type: blogs