Job Security

From a recent analysis:

The number of physicians with board certification in emergency medicine is unlikely to meet the staffing needs of U.S. emergency departments in the foreseeable future, if ever. In the December issue of Academic Emergency Medicine, the investigators report finding that staffing every emergency department with board-certified emergency physicians does not appear to be feasible, given their projections for the field.

Having at least one board-certified emergency physician present in all U.S. hospital emergency departments at all times would require 40,000 physicians with such training, indicating that only 55 percent of 2005 demand was being met. Under the intermediate-scenario projection, it would not be possible to meet the goal until 2038, and under the worst-case scenario, the goal could never be met. Even if no board-certified emergency physician ever died or retired, 100 percent staffing of all emergency departments with board-certified emergency physicians would not happen for more than a decade.

via NCEMI