BK Med Students' Scholarship Could Help NYC's Doctor Shortage

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — What does New York City's struggle to fill its hospitals with physicians have to do with a medical school thousands of miles away on a Caribbean island? Quite a bit, according to a partnership between the school and NYC's health system.

St. George's University, a beachside school on the island of Grenada, is in its eighth year of offering a program known as CityDoctor, which awards scholarships to its medical school for NYC's up and coming doctors with the promise that they return to practice in the New York City's Health + Hospital system for a certain number of years after they graduate.

The hope being, SGU Executive Vice President Dr. Fred Jacobs said, that the students will stay longterm in the city after those few required years. And, if they do, help fill gaps in the shortage of physicians that health systems face across the country, specifically in some of New York City's neediest areas.

"You would think of New York City as being kind of the Mecca for high quality academic medical care, and it is, but there are areas in New York City that are in fact underserved," Jacobs said. "The factors that lead to a doctor to stay in an area are number one where they're from and where they did their post-graduate training. That was motivating to us to make this arrangement with the city so that medical students would train at these hospitals and want to stay there."

This year, five of those scholarships went to students from Brooklyn — including one to Lea Gance, of Williamsburg, who said she plans to use her degree to return and practice in the borough. She will be required to train at one of NYC's hospitals for two years when she graduates.

Gance studied for her bachelor's at New York University and got her master's degree in acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine through a program in the city.

She's hoping to bring what she learned there and at SGU to offer primary care to those that need it the most in the borough, she said.

"If there is a lack of access to care or a lack of access to affordable, healthy options, it's not that people don't want to choose the healthy option, it's that it's not an option for them," she said. "I want to provide a quality care that is for everyone and is affordable."

Gance, who has lived in Williamsburg for four and a half years, said she knew already that she wanted to return to Brooklyn after medical school, but that the scholarship makes that an easier financial reality.

Student debt after medical school is one of the major reasons there is a primary care physician shortage, Jacobs said. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) predicts a shortage of 46,000 to 90,000 physicians by 2025.

"These days, when you're coming out (of medical school) and you're looking at $200,000 worth of debt, it skews your choice of what specialty you're attracted to," he said. "Primary care gets the short strip because they're traditionally lower-paying."

In New York City, he said, the shortage isn't necessarily as drastic as other parts of the state or country, but there are areas where it has impacted care. Underserved areas include those with low socio-economic levels and often neighborhoods that are seen as "dangerous" given that doctors might instead choose to live in safer parts of the city, he said.

Jacobs added that more and more people are relying on physician's assistants or nurses for their care. This can be a good option for treatment, he said, but shortage of fully-trained physicians could lead to problems with the most important part of care — the diagnosis.

"People don't come in with labels on their foreheads," he said. "It's the job of the physician to make the diagnosis. That's the heart of it."

In total, 12 medical students earned a CityDoctor scholarship from New York City this year. In a similar partnership in New Jersey, only two SGU students won the scholarship.

The students from Brooklyn include residents of Midwood, Canarsie, East Flatbush, Prospect Park South and Gance, in Williamsburg.

In part because of its CityDoctors program, Jacobs said, SGU currently has 14,000 graduates working as physicians in the United States, landing it in the top five schools for providing physicians for the country.

"There was this feeling that we should produce doctors for this global medicine," he said. "The bulk of students (at SGU) are U.S. students who want to stay in the U.S."