Med students skip ER residencies, opt for specialties over much needed basics

Despite emergency medicine leading the way in the treatment for COVID-19 and the overdose epidemic, medical students are moving toward various specialties, some of which are non-essentials forms of treatment.

The National Resident Matching program noted that there were 550 positions for emergency medicine residents left vacant this year. The recent data represents a trend, where 335 emergency medicine residency positions were available last year. And the current number is significantly higher than the same open positions reported in 2018, which was only 13.

However, experts have presented logical explanations for the downward trend in medical students entering the ER world, including the pandemic, cutting costs, and the overall corporatization of medicine, according to Axios.

The American Academy of Emergency Medicine and affiliate groups said the following in a joint statement: “This is a challenging time for EM…As we focus on solutions, we continue to work hard to support trainees, residency programs, and faculty."

Jessica Adkins Murphy, the president of the Emergency Medicine Residents Association, noted that prospective doctors see the toll the emergency medicine field takes on its workers. For this reason, medical students may be dissuaded from entering the emergency medicine field altogether.

Additionally, medical students are also starting to pay attention to the direction of politics and how they relate to the state that they apply for residency in.

One medical student reportedly shared with The Cut, saying: “I’m in my interview season, tracking governor races in states where I don’t live… I had a vested interest in how people in Pennsylvania were voting because it determined whether having the foundation of my career there made sense.

Axios also reported that emergency care could become even more important as millions of Americans come off Medicaid amid the end of the COVID-19 public health crisis, resulting in a loss of access to important preventative services.