This month, a very significant event for millions of Americans took place: the National Resident Matching Program’s annual residency match. This is when medical school graduates hope to find a residency program where they will continue their graduate medical education. These are the physicians who will be caring for you and me, and our children and grandchildren.
While we celebrate this achievement for these graduating students, when we look at the final numbers, we will see that our goal of creating a physician workforce that is representative of our nation is still falling short. Studies show we are heading for a physician shortage crisis, but the shortage of minority doctors is a crisis we are already facing — and have faced for over a century. To overcome this challenge, we must look not at the graduates going through the match process, but at the applicants our medical schools are reaching out to and matriculating.
It is imperative that we, the undergraduate medical education community, take concrete steps to ensure that opportunities for underrepresented students, including those of African American, Hispanic and Native American descent, continue to improve and expand. As medical educators, we are especially committed to advancing opportunities that will help us foster a more diverse physician workforce that more accurately represents our nation’s patient population. But we cannot do this alone.
