The latest "bad value" degree . . .

MD. So says the Washington Post

One more thing for premed students to freak out about

 

The article mentions that there aren't enough residency programs due to a lack of government funding. I don't want this to turn into a political discussion but I genuinely don't understand why any external funding is necessary for residencies. Don't med schools rake in enough cash to fund them themselves? What about the hospitals that get a lot of inexpensive/free work from the docs? What am I missing here?

 

Residents are paid, mid five figures plus benefits.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) accredits medical residencies (a second system for osteopathic medical residencies is merging into the ACGME). They have rigorous requirements including for residency faculty, some with protected percentages of their time to devote to the residency program; they have working-hour caps and they've clamped down on this in recent years, etc.

As for the clinical work of residents, yes, it's very valuable. But at every point a resident has to have an attending physician, a residency graduate fully licensed, supervising them and more or less immediately accessible. Especially in later years of residency, on night and weekend shifts in quiet wards, etc., an attending might be "on call" and not physically stationed at the hospital. But they can't be far. The attending is responsible for every patient under their resident's care, and this is much, much more direct in form than many of the supervision arrangements now seen between a physician and a PA or NP.

If you wanted to not pay residents, to pay residency faculty little or nothing per se, and throw new med school graduates who couldn't get a better offer on to the floors as free help and have them learn what they learned on a catch-as-catch-can basis… they'd catch something, but this wouldn't be anything like an accreditable residency program.