Many have heard of the rise of drug-resistant infections. But few know about an issue that’s making this threat even scarier in the United States: the shortage of specialists capable of diagnosing and treating those infections, reports The New York Times.
Infectious diseases is one of just two medicine subspecialties that routinely do not fill all of their training spots every year in the National Resident Matching Program (the other is nephrology). Between 2009 and 2017, the number of programs filling all of their adult-infectious-disease training positions dropped by more than 40 percent.
This could not be happening at a worse time. Antibiotic-resistant microbes, known as superbugs, are pinballing around the world, killing hundreds of thousands of people every year.
Everyone who works in health care agrees that we need more infectious-disease doctors, yet very few actually want the job. What’s going on?
