CHICAGO - Only two percent of fresh medical graduates have planned to work in primary care internal medicine, creating a shortage of the first-stop doctors who considered being the backbone of the American medical system, according to a new survey.

Results published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The figure was nine percent in a similar survey in 1990.

Paperwork, demands of the chronic patients and abundance of work are the factors changing young doctors mind. Primary care doctors he met as a student had to “speed to see enough patients to make a reasonable living,” Shipman said.

Dr. Karen Hauer the study’s lead author said it is hard to take care of the chronically ill, the elderly and people with compound diseases “especially when you’re doing it with time pressures and inadequate resources.”

The salary difference may be another reason. Family medicine had the lowest salary last year, $186,000, and the smallest share of residency slots filled by U.S. students, 42 percent. In the meantime, medical school is getting more and more expensive. The average graduate last year had $140,000 in student debt, up nearly 8 percent from the previous year, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

A separate study in JAMA said graduates, from international medical schools are filling the primary care gap.

Almost 2,600 U.S. doctors were training in primary care specialties in 2007 compared with 2002. During the same time, the number of foreign graduates rose by nearly 3,300.
“Primary care is holding steady but only because of international medical school graduates and static numbers are probably not sufficient when the population is growing and aging.” said Edward Salsberg of the Association of American Medical Colleges.