Sammie Gutierrez, MD ’22, is only one of the many St. George’s University School of Medicine graduates who are returning to their hometowns to help solve the ongoing physician shortage. Dr. Gutierrez hopes is a first-year family medicine resident in Tennessee, one of the states expected to be hardest hit by this shortage according to the National Institutes of Health.
In a recent article published by the Commercial Appeal, Dr. Gutierrez speaks about her experience as an international medical student and why she chose to return to her hometown of Memphis after receiving her medical degree.
“When I was thinking, ‘where can you practice and really make an impact?’ Memphis is such a good city for that because we have this wealth gap. And we have such a large population of people that live at or below the poverty level, and they need family care doctors,” said Dr. Guiterrez in her quoted statement.
Dr. Richard Olds, president emeritus at SGU, is also quoted in the article explaining the need for international medical graduates like Dr. Guiterrez in the United States. He speaks about the need to recruit doctors who not only have excellent exam scores and grades but who also can connect with patients and belong to underserved and underrepresented populations.
“Until the United States builds enough medical schools for its own needs, and probably more important in the short run, builds more graduate medical education slots…we’re going to continue to have a fairly significant shortage,” Dr. Olds said in his quoted statement. “So this situation is going to get considerably worse. And obviously, international medical graduates are going to have to fill the void.”
To read more, please find the subscriber-access-only article below.