BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — The University at Buffalo's Jacobs School of Medicine is working to recruit more medical students interested in becoming family practitioners.
"The Department of Family Medicine has been active in trying to recruit student interest into our discipline for decades," Dr. Andrea Manyon, the interim chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the Jacobs School of Medicine, said.
The medical school has created scholarships and partnered with local health care providers for signing bonuses for residents to attract more medical school students to primary care.
"If I just eyeball this table in front of me, we're looking at 10-12 [medical students] per year on average, whereas we are needing probably 50 primary care providers, family physicians, in Western New York over the next ten years," Dr. Manyon said.
The Association of American Medical Colleges has predicted a national shortage of about 40,000-124,000 primary care physicians in the next 12 years.
However, the workload generated by the shortage of family doctors may be offset by an increase in nurse practitioners.
In 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted a 40% increase in the number of nurse practitioners in the next 10 years.
"I think it's a win-win, because we do a lot of what doctors do. Obviously, we don't have the extensive training they do, but we are trained and prepared well before we're put out into the field or whatever field we choose," Kyle Horton-Maser, a family nurse practitioner, said.
Nurse practitioners can work in nearly all areas of medicine, but they aren't the same as doctors.
Indeed.com said primary care physicians in Buffalo make, on average, about $135,000 per year. They go to school for 10 to 12 years.
"We don't have the long term education that they have. We can get out there and do the assessing and the treating and the prescribing and the evaluations, whatever it may be in a little bit shorter of time. But you are typically working underneath a doctors," Horton-Maser said.
Indeed.com said nurse practitioners in Buffalo make about $126,000 per year, and they go to school for about six to eight years.
"I certainly do not think a nurse practitioner or [physician's assistant] could replace the need for primary care providers in this country, in this state, or in this region, but to have them working along side us is a tremendous advantage for us to be more productive, and I mean productive in answering and addressing the needs of the community," Dr. Manyon said.
