PA Turned MD Blames "Midlevels" for Devaluation of Physicians

[lkth487]

The way ACGME training is heading, I would be extremely shocked if that's happened. I just don't see it.  For medico-legal and practical purposes, you can't really mimic intern year while still in school.  I appreciate that it used to happen but ACGME won't allow it in future.  But hey, I'm no oracle and I don't have any inside knowledge.  Everything is being standardizied and formalized across the board, and many alternative and non standard pathways are going away (which sucks for me because I was interested in a combined pathway for fellowship but they took it away a few years ago). 

These are obviously guesses so you might be right and maybe these programs will be coming back/in the works. 

[ProSpectre]

There are currently about a dozen US medical schools that have 3 year accelerated pathways to complete an MD degree. Most are specifically designed for the students in those tracts to match into primary care residencies, but at least 2-3 of these programs allow students to match into any specialty they choose. NYU and Medical College of Wisconsin are the two that come to mind that don't limit students in the 3-year programs to primary care or family medicine. 

As an aside, I don't think residency should (or could) be shortened for any PA-to-physician bridge programs that may open in the future, but it would be nice if they could shorten the program length to about 2 - 2.5 years straight through for basic sciences and Step 1, and take the PA school rotations into account for the 3rd year of medical school. Not sure that it would be feasible (or desirable due to lost tuition dollars for those schools), but it's a nice thought.