Despite the growing number of older Americans, the number of board-certified geriatricians in the U.S. dropped from 10,270 in 2000 to 7,413 in 2022, according to the American Board of Medical Specialties.
In a viewpoint article published Aug. 4 in JAMA, Jerry Gurwitz, MD, a professor at the UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, detailed four reasons many physicians do not want to specialize in geriatric medicine:
- Geriatrics is typically a lower-paying specialty; the median salary of geriatricians was 9 percent lower than that of general internists and 14 percent lower than that of hospitalists.
- The way medical students and residents view aging and older adults influence their career decision-making, with some of the negative perceptions being that geriatric patients are "end of life," cognitively impaired or have complex medical problems, Dr. Gurwitz wrote.
- Demographic trends in the population are not attracting residents to the specialty.
- Geriatrics may be viewed as a less prestigious specialty, with only two of the 33 Beeson scholars for the National Institute on Aging over the past three years being geriatricians, he wrote.