Even though physicians from just about every medical specialty can work on a locum tenens basis, we have a soft spot for primary care at VISTA. Why? Because that’s where it all began. The locum tenens industry in the US grew out of the need for support and backup coverage for primary care physicians in rural areas.
The National Resident Matching Program results released yesterday brought the welcome news that not only were a record number of medical residency positions offered this year, but more new doctors showed an interest in primary-care training programs.
Here are some numbers:
- A total of 26,158 residency positions, including 12,421 first-year and 2,737 second-year positions were offered.
- This was a 2.5% increase over last year's 25,520 slots.
- The increase included 112 more internal-medicine positions, 100 more family-medicine slots, 51 more emergency medicine positions, 45 more for anesthesiology, and 38 more for neurology.
- More than 95% of the first-year residency positions were filled.
- 94.4% of family-medicine positions (2,555) were filled this year, versus 91.4% (2,384) filled last year.
- 5,065 internal medicine slots were filled this year, versus 4,947 in 2010.
- The number of applicants from U.S. schools increased 11.3% for family medicine and 8% for internal medicine.