Graduating medical school students participate in a rite of spring called “Match Day,” in which they learn where they will complete their training and the next three to seven, or more, years of their lives.

This is the medical school-teaching hospital equivalent of computer dating.

Each submits its preferences. The computer “matches” students to teaching hospitals. All over the U.S., on one day, envelopes are opened and yells fill the air. It is called the National Resident Matching Program.

This year, there was, perhaps, a sign of spring in primary care residencies. Interest in primary care has been down as doctors retired and fewer students picked family practice or internal medicine specialties.

The forecasts of need for primary care keep going up, the current and future physician supply trending down.

Something’s got to give. Maybe it has. This is a tiny but encouraging increase. Many students pick high-paying specialties because they come out of school debt-loaded. Primary care specialists do not make the kind of money which would enable them to pay off debt at the same rate as other specialties.

Student financial debt leads to a primary care doctor deficit for patients.

Medpage Today

““Once again, the most competitive residency positions in the match were neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, dermatology, and otolaryngology, with 90% of the available training slots in those specialties filled by seniors at U.S. medical schools.”

…”But there was also good news in primary care — which has suffered from declining interest in recent years. There was a 9% increase in the number of U.S. medical school seniors who sought positions in family medicine residency programs, along with a 3% increase in internal medicine, and a 2% increase in U.S. seniors matching to pediatrics.”

Source: Medpage Today, March 19, 2010