Administrative / Leadership / Education
Don Hoang, MD
Resident Physician
Penn State Health Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States
Danielle Perret Karimi, MD
Clinical Professor of PM&R and Anesthesiology
UC Irvine.
Orange, California, United States
Rachel Sunico, MD
Assistant Clinical Professor
UC Irvine Dept of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Orange, California, United States
Don Hoang, MD
Penn State Health Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States
As evidenced by the World Health Organization’s Rehabilitation 2030 initiative, medicine’s focus is shifting from extending life expectancy to optimizing quality of life and function. Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) is well suited to lead this culture shift; however, PM&R’s reach is seemingly limited, with significant disparities in physiatric care and academic presence within the United States (US), particularly in the South, as noted by Perret et al. in 2018. This discussion aims to provide an update regarding PM&R presence in academic medicine.
Design:
US medical schools were obtained using the Association of American Medical Colleges and American Osteopathic Association medical school databases, and website searches were conducted to identify PM&R academic entities. Each school was designated as having either independent departments, shared departments, divisions, or no academic entities. This data was subsequently analyzed by state and region, and the findings were compared to the 2018 data.
Results:
The Northeast possessed the most PM&R academic entities with 37.0%, followed by the South with 25.0%, Central with 24.1%, and West with 13.9%. Similarly, the Northeast had the largest relative PM&R presence at 74.1% of schools, followed by Central at 54.2%, West at 38.5%, and South at 32.1%. Compared to 2018, the number of PM&R academic entities grew in the Northeast, South, and West. However, with respect to overall medical school growth, only the Northeast demonstrated growth at 3.9%, while the others demonstrated regression, ranging from -2.6% to -3.5%.
Conclusions:
While PM&R academic entities have increased since 2018, PM&R’s growth is not matching overall medical school growth in the US, especially in the South, which continues to have the largest PM&R deficit. This pace of growth will likely propagate workforce disparities, reduce patient access to appropriate healthcare, decrease UME exposure to PM&R, and minimize PM&R’s GME footprint compared to other specialties.
