A decade ago, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 24% of the global disease burden but was served by only 4% of the global health workforce. The chronic shortage of medical doctors has led other health professionals especially nurses to perform the role of healthcare providers. These health workers have been variously named clinical officers, health officers, physician assistants, nurse practition...

Since 2003 the radiologist assistant (RA) was introduced in response to the severe shortage of radiologists and the increased demand for medical imaging services. Other non-physician clinicians, such as PAs, currently play an important role in the medical imaging environment. The article discusses the reasons physician assistants have found favor with interventional radiologists, and advocates ...

CONTEXT In post-war Japan, a number of factors lead to a general shortage of physicians by the 1950s, which became acute in rural areas and has continued until recent times. ISSUE Teamwork among national, prefectural, municipal governments and public medical schools has addressed this shortage of physicians. The national government doubled the number of medical schools in the 1960s and 1970s;...

As the overall population ages, policy makers are focusing on the current and growing shortage of the primary care workforce (1–3), particularly as provisions of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) expand health insurance coverage. This report presents selected trends in physician shortage measures and access to care measures for generalist physicians and specialists. Ge...

BACKGROUND Experts have historically recommended better integration of public health content into medical education. Whether this adoption is associated with physician practice location has not been studied. PURPOSE To examine the association between medical student perception of their public health and community medicine instruction and practice location in a Health Professional Shortage Are...

T he care of the critically ill patients accounts for 1% of the gross domestic product in the United States.1 The aging of the American population in the next 2 decades will increase the burden of acute and chronic illness and the demand for critical care services.2 The Leapfrog Group, a consortium of Fortune 500 companies, has identified critical care as a major factor in health-care quality.3...

There is a chronic shortage of anesthesiologists in Israel. The study by Cohen et al. suggests that a marketing campaign may be one method of addressing this shortage. This commentary argues for a more comprehensive strategy based on the US experience. This would not only involve marketing as suggested by Cohen et al. but would also involve a fundamental change in the Israel anesthesia care mod...

We can reasonably assume continued rapid expansion in our understanding of the biology of mental illness, an increase in effective psychotherapeutic interventions, a strong demand for more educational and clinical accountability, and application of innovative technology to teaching—all in the context of a worsening physician shortage. Each of these factors requires significant revisions to our ...

Policymakers are increasingly interested in addressing the US primary care physician shortage and achieving measurable accountability for the products of the nation's $15 billion investment in graduate medical education (GME). Using one such measure, we found that sponsoring institutions (SIs) with ≤5 residency programs produce a higher percentage of general internists and family physicians tha...