Cultivating the physician workforce: Recruiting, training, and retaining physicians to meet the needs of the population

Abstract

In the 10 years since the Lancet Commission on Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century suggested the changes necessary to transform medical education, the United States remains plagued by shortages of physicians and maldistribution of the physician workforce. Minoritized and rural communities usually suffer the most, with widely documented health disparities across the United States by race, ethnicity, gender identity, education, and zip code. Medical schools can respond by recruiting students more likely to practice in these settings and training them to address the community needs. In 2013, the American Medical Association launched an initiative to trigger transformation in medical education and formed a consortium of schools representing a diversity of U.S. institutions. Consortium member schools highlighted in this article share lessons learned in their efforts to strengthen social accountability and develop needed sectors of the physician workforce. Development of the physician workforce involves recruiting and widening pathways of entry for diverse groups, providing training settings and competencies aligned with community needs, and explicit programming in retention, inclusion and well-being to mitigate against workforce losses.

Keywords:

• Medical education
• social accountability
• structural and social determinants of health
• diversity equity and inclusion
• well-being

Acknowledgments

The authors thank their home institutions, fellow members of the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium, Kimberly Lomis, MD for editorial guidance on this manuscript, and the AMA for their support of innovation.

The AMA Supplement is sponsored and supported by The American Medical Association.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect American Medical Association policy.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded in part by the American Medical Association.

Notes on contributors

Carol A. Terregino

Carol A. Terregino, MD, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA.

Julie Byerley

Julie Byerley, MD, MPH, University of North Carolina, School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.

David D. Henderson

David D. Henderson, MD, University of Connecticut, School of Medicine, Farmington, CT, USA.

Erica Friedman

Erica Friedman, MD, The City College of New York, School of Medicine NY, USA.

Martha L. Elks

Martha L. Elks, MD, PhD, Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA.

Isaac J. Kirstein

Isaac J. Kirstein, DO, Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, Ohio University, Cleveland, OH, USA.

Andrea N. Leep-Hunderfund

Andrea Leep-Hunderfund, MD, MHPE, Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, Rochester, MN, USA.

Tonya L. Fancher

Tonya L. Fancher, MD, MPH, University of California Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA, USA.