Latest news with #medicalgraduates
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Large number of UH med grads plan to stay home and serve community
HONOLULU (KHON2) — On May 18, 76 students graduated from the John A. Burns School of Medicine at UH Manoa. The school said 66% of the Class of 2025 will enter specialties most needed in the state like internal medicine, pediatrics, family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology. And most of the students plan on staying in Hawaii. Oregon man sails to Hawaiʻi following medical diagnosis 'I feel like our community is unlike anywhere else in the world,' said JABSOM graduate Dr. Lauren Muraoka, who is from Mililani. 'So, I'm grateful I get to stay here for the next three years.' Kahaluu native Dr. Krystin Wong, who is going into pediatrics, shared the sentiments of giving back to the community that was there for her. 'I'm really excited to continue training here in Hawaii, and give back to the community that raised me, and take care of patients that are family and friends, that's really important to me,' Wong said. 'And working with kids is something I'm really passionate about.'Dr. Lee Buenconsejo-Lum, the associate dean for academic fairs at the school, said that two-thirds of the graduates are going into essential fields. 'We have about 40% that are staying home for residency which we're really happy about,' Buenconsejo-Lum said. 'Sixty-six percent of our total graduates are going into critical specialties or primary care and of course we have a shortage here, and many do want to come home and that's really important.' She said it's the highest number in years and says physicians typically return back to the islands 10 to 15 years after their fellowship. Download the free KHON2 app for iOS or Android to stay informed on the latest news 'We have seen recently graduates coming home sooner, which we really like,' she added. She said with an aging workforce that it's critically important to find ways to bring Hawaii doctors home. 'I know for sure there are a couple of graduates who want to go back to the Big Island and at least one or two who want to go back to Maui,' Buenconsejo-Lum added. And the students had similar reasons for wanting to stay. UH Mānoa students celebrate 2025 Spring Commencement 'I want to serve the community we grew up in and who gave so much to us,' said Dr. Kerri Niino, who graduated on May 18 and is originally from Mililani. 'So it's really a privilege to be able to treat the kids of Hawaii.' For some graduates, the opportunity to work in Hawaii is almost nostalgic. 'I was born at Kapiolani and in my third year of medical school I was able to go back to my pediatrician's office that I grew up in and I worked there for five months, so it was a nice full circle moment,' said Dr. Amanda Chau, a Kaimuki resident who will have her residency at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children. The school hopes it can expand its graduating class in the future but for now, scholarships with a service commitment to Hawaii and the Hawaii healthcare education loan repayment program have been helpful. 'That helps because that program is not just for practicing physicians, but also a program for residence and if they're away and commit to come back right after, then we'll start to pay off a portion of their loans while they're in residency,' explained Dr. Buenconsejo-Lum. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Russia wants medical grads to find work in one year or pay the government 3 times their education expenses
Russia is worried that its medical graduates aren't working in hospitals after finishing school. A new draft bill would force many of them to find healthcare jobs within a year of graduation. The country is short of 23,300 doctors, but poor wages are keeping new ones from taking up work. Russia's health ministry has drafted a new bill that requires fresh medical and pharmacy graduates from state-affiliated programs to start working within a year of finishing school. If they fail to do so, they'll have to pay a fine worth three times the amount spent by the government on their education, whether it be funds from a state, federal, or local budget. This latest version of the federal education bill, made public on Tuesday, also proposes that after finding a healthcare job, medical graduates from state-funded schools must continue working for three years. Their other option is to continue their studies. The vast majority of Russia's medical schools are funded by or affiliated with the government, with lawmakers saying 154 institutions and scientific organizations draw from federal, state, and local budgets. Russian business daily Kommersant estimated in February that it costs the state about $2,480 a year to train a medical student. As such, under the new bill, if a Russian medical student undergoes the typical six years of training, they could face a fine of $42,000 or higher if they don't find a job within a year of graduation. Calculations for the fines would be up to the Russian government, the bill added. If these measures become law, they would take effect on January 1, 2026. Sergei Leonov, the head of the Russian State Duma's healthcare committee, told local media on Monday that parliament was ready to support the bill, but could tighten it with further amendments. "In fact, they violate their obligations to the state," he said of graduates avoiding hospital work. The proposal underscores a shortage of doctors and nurses in Russia, which authorities fear will escalate into a national crisis. In February, Russia's health minister, Mikhail Murashko, told local media that the country was short of about 23,300 doctors and 63,500 "midlevel" personnel, which includes nurses and technicians. That's out of a total of about 550,000 doctors already in Russia's workforce, per Murashko. But he added that nearly a fifth of these professionals are over 60 years old. Meanwhile, the country is struggling to recruit young doctors and nurses, even after they finish school. In a note attached to the new bill, the health ministry said that in state-affiliated schools, 35% of graduates from higher medical education and 40% of graduates in vocational medical education don't work in state or public health organizations. Low and inconsistent pay is often blamed for young medical graduates shirking hospital careers. Russian lawmaker Galina Izotova, who serves in the government chamber that audits federal budgets, said in March that doctors' salaries in 21 of Russia's 89 regions hadn't reached the minimum level mandated by law. "There remains significant variation in salary levels between neighboring regions, contributing to labor migration. In some regions, salary differences can be three times or greater," Izotova told the Duma that month. When the Doctors of the Russian Federation, a professional community for medical workers, surveyed 2,030 doctors in March 2024, 78.9% of them said they had to work more than one job to make ends meet. About two-thirds of them, including doctors in the Moscow region, said that they were drawing monthly salaries of $727 or less. That could indicate a wide imbalance in wages across the country, since Russia's federal statistics service reported that the average physician's salary was about $1,400 from January to June of 2024. Russia is also struggling with a brain drain of highly educated and skilled workers since it invaded Ukraine in 2022, with a million citizens, mostly young and college-educated people, leaving that year. The effects of the departures, compounded with the war's toll on Russian lives, led to a reported shortage of some 5 million workers in 2023. The UK's Defense Ministry said in a February 2024 intelligence update that the war has likely exacerbated Russia's shortage of doctors, with about 2% of its medical personnel fleeing the country to avoid a mobilization in September 2022. Another 3,000 medical staff were also likely assigned to help treat the war's wounded, the ministry added. Read the original article on Business Insider
RNZ News
07-05-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
Medical Council fears political interference over doctor shortage
Photo: RNZ Politicians should not be allowed to decide who can practise as a doctor in New Zealand in the current shake-up of health workforce regulations, the Medical Council has warned. Consultation on updating health workforce regulations has just closed. Health Minister Simeon Brown has said the current system was overly bureaucratic, and he wanted to streamline overseas recruitment while maintaining clinical standards. However, Medical Council chair Dr Rachelle Love told Nine to Noon red tape was not stopping overseas trained doctors getting registered in New Zealand. About 44 percent of doctors in New Zealand were overseas-trained, and each year, about 70 percent of new registrations were for international medical graduates, and fewer than 1 percent of international applicants were declined registration. "Where the concern is, is the retention of those doctors. So the international medical graduates who come to New Zealand, by year one, 40 percent have left. By year two, 60 percent of internationally medical trained doctors have left New Zealand." Love, a Christchurch head and neck surgeon, said the focus needed to be on why these doctors were "not thriving" in the New Zealand health system, and what support they needed to integrate and stay. "It's not about getting doctors in the front door." The Medical Council, which oversees clinical standards and cultural competency for doctors, was supportive of the idea of modernising the regulatory system, Love said. There was room for more collaboration and even consolidation. "We agree with many of the tenets in this document. We think it's important to prioritise patient voices, it's important to drive efficiencies and streamlining regulation is important. "The document is an opportunity to ensure the regulatory system is working, and it's aligned to the needs to patients, communities, practitioners and the wider health system." However, any overhauled workforce regulations had to ensure they matched the "risk profile" of the professions. For instance, ensuring doctors were fit to practise was "high stake". "Too far is when the public is affected. The public need to be safe in any decisions that are made. The groups also need to have independence, they can't have political independence, they need to stand aside from the politics of the day. And clinical input is really important." The Health Ministry's proposal includes the set up of a tribunal to allow individuals to challenge decisions made by the regulatory bodies without having to go to court. Love said the council was open to having a tribunal as it was confident in the integrity of its processes - but its fear was that this would "not be an independent body, that in fact politicians would be determining who would become a doctor in New Zealand". Doctors and other health professionals had also been taken by surprise by the signalled intention to remove proving "cultural competency" from requirements to practise in New Zealand, Love said. "In health care in general, we're a little surprised that cultural safety has become a political issue. "Cultural safety is fundamentally about listening to patients and centring them in their healthcare. And it's not a new concept. Hippocrates - 2500 years ago - talked about the importance of listening to patients, hearing their account of their symptoms, how they made sense of their own health, and then looking at factors like their family history and environmental conditions in their health." Cultural safety was integral to effective clinical care and the evidence showed it led to improved health outcomes for all patients, not just for Māori, she said. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
