Opinion: If Covid-19 will peak in June, teaching hospitals should consider delaying the start of new medical residents
Some projections place the peak of Covid-19 infections in the U.S. between May and June. If it is still going strong at the end of June, it will collide with the start of a new year in teaching hospitals across the country: July 1 is traditionally the day that new doctors who had been medical students just a month or two earlier start work as doctors.
As of now, nearly 38,000 newly minted doctors will begin their first-year positions as residents at the beginning of July. Around the same time, doctors advancing to their second year of training will be switching hospitals, even states, as they advance in their chosen specialties. And in specialties like ours, internal medicine, those who have competed the third year of their residencies will be moving on to pursue careers or fellowship training at other hospitals.
