Incorporating the residency and internship
Resident matching program
Residency training
Medical specialties
Fellowship training
Improving postgraduate training
Challenges in training
New trends in medical specialties
Physician employment opportunities
When the internship first became an established part of postgraduate medical education in the early part of this century, its purpose was straightforward and uniform: a rotating internship, with nearly equal portions devoted to medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics-gynecology, which provided the first extended clinical experience and the first supervised responsibility for the welfare of p…
Almost all graduates of U.S. and Canadian medical schools secure internship appointments in U.S. hospitals through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). More specifically, in a recent year, 93% of about 14,300 U.S. senior medical students who participated in the NRMP received a first-year residency position. This reverses the trend for placement in proceeding years. Foreign medical…
After the first postgraduate year comes specialization. The function of this extended period of training has changed greatly since its start a century ago. At that time a residency was a special period of additional clinical education for a few promising and scholarly young physicians who wished to become the teachers or leaders in medicine. Residency training since the period after World War II h…
One of medicine's attractions is the numerous and wide variety of career options it offers. These options range from allergy to women's health, and incorporate an intense work style, from emergency or critical care medicine to a more dispassionate approach such as psychiatry. Medicine may involve actively seeing patients or dealing primarily with one's peers (pathology or radi…
After completing four years of medical school and several years of residency, many physicians consider seeking a fellowship for training in a subspecialty. While still in medical school, additional training beyond the residency is considered remote but this attitude is reversed in the course of time. By gaining an awareness of the advantages of subspecialization, trends in various medical discipli…
The long-established system of clinical education is one in which senior physicians serve as instructors to their junior colleagues. This apprentice system may be flawed by the fact that mentor physicians often lack formal training as educators. This weakness impacts directly on the atmosphere and ultimate success of the learning process. As a result of the increased awareness that many physicians…
For many years the postgraduate training interlude was looked upon as an initiation rite into the exclusive world of medical practice. Stress and a heavy workload have long been accepted as part of this process. Recently, a growing number of educators, as well as many trainees, have emphasized the negative aspects of this process. A key problem is that most physicians, including young attendings, …
Discoveries in research and changes in society have resulted in changes within established medical specialties, as well as the evolution of new specialties. A brief overview of several specialties that have taken new directions follows. Public demand for a single, competent physician for the entire family has grown as the availability of such physicians continues to diminish. To meet this need, th…
Because of the shortage of physicians in rural and inner city areas, it was decided in the late 1960s to increase the number of practicing physicians. It was assumed that this would bring about a surplus of urban physicians and induce a better geographical distribution of health professionals. This has not come about and the underserved areas have had only modest improvement in spite of a higher r…
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