With a physician shortage looming, in 2006 the Association of American Medical Colleges set a goal of boosting first-year medical school enrollment by 30 percent between 2002’s baseline and 2015.
It’s going to miss that target by a few years, the AAMC said according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. In its 2009 med school survey, the group’s Center for Workforce Studies said enrollment will be up by 23 percent in 2015, to 20,281, and up a projected 30 percent in 2018.
Enrollment at med schools and osteopathic med schools combined, however, will rise to 26,550 in 2015, up 36 percent from 2002.
That would seem to be good news for the physician shortage, but the real bottleneck for future doctors is the number of residency slots. U.S. med school graduates vie for those spots with international graduates and osteopaths, and that competition is likely to heat up, the AAMC report said.
The Patient Life 