US medical training must adapt to reflect modern needs, say workforce planners

Increasing the number of doctors will not by itself be enough to assure the quality of healthcare in the United States, a workforce expert has said. Also needed will be a change in the roles of supporting workers to meet the evolving healthcare environment.

Edward Salsberg, director of the National Center for Workforce Analysis within the US Department of Health and Human Services, was speaking at a briefing on the medical workforce held for congressional staff members on 15 November.

Thomas Ricketts, a health policy analyst at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said that healthcare reform legislation enacted in early 2010 “mainly reauthorised a lot of existing programmes” for training …