What Happens if We Run Out of Doctors?
Author(s): Rich Barlow Boston University Today, 2011
A doctor deficit plagues the country, and persuading more medical students to become old-fashioned general practice family docs requires three measures: more public subsidies for medical education, more primary care provided by nurses and foreign doctors, and a stomach for alphabet-soup abbreviations.
Those conclusions spring from two studies now being conducted by Stephen Davidson, a School of Management professor of markets, public policy, and law. Aided by students in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, which offers BU undergrads the opportunity to participate in research projects with a faculty mentor, Davidson is seeking a solution for a problem that the American College of Physicians has issued a dire warning about: “Primary care, the backbone of the nation’s health care system, is at grave risk of collapse.”
