Report Outline
President's Health Manpower Proposals
Doctor Shortage and Medical Schools
Record of American Medical Education
Plans for Meeting the Urgent Needs
President's Health Manpower Proposals
President johnson, in a far-ranging “Health in America” message to Congress on March 4, geared his health recommendations for 1968 to five major goals. Listed second only to an attack on the “inexcusably high rate of infant mortality in the United States” was action “to meet the urgent need for more doctors, nurses and other health workers.” The President conceded that it would take years to achieve the goals he named, but he declared that they “must be reached if we are to guarantee to every citizen a full measure of safety, health, and good medical care.”
The shortage of doctors and other health personnel in this country has been a source of concern for years. Measures to help remedy the situation have been adopted by Congress, but the shortage persists. A National Advisory Commission on Health Manpower, appointed by the President on May 7, 1966, made an exhaustive exploration of the situation. Its recommendations, submitted Nov. 20, 1967, formed the basis for some of the President's current proposals.
The question involves more than a search for means of expanding enrollment in medical, nursing and related schools. It extends also to steps that might be taken to shorten the long period of training now necessary in medical education; to possible revision of the curricula of medical schools; and to review of the effects which the current high degree of specialization in medical practice, and the growing concentration on research, may have on the supply of medical manpower required to meet day-to-day medical needs of the general population. |
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