When my primary care doc referred me to a dermatologist for a suspicious mole, I could not find an actual dermatologist who would see me in less than ~8 months. I ended up seeing a physician's assistant, which I'm still uneasy about since there's been a study that shows that PA's seem to have a lower success rate vs. doctors [1], and the educational requirements are very different for PAs.

As a layperson, it seems like we (patients / society) would benefit from having more doctors, i.e. opening up more residency slots and admitting more people to med school, but there's probably a lot I don't understand about the issue. Not sure if it's a lack of political willpower to do this, or if there are other reasons why the number of doctors we train is so restricted.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29710082/ ("PAs performed more skin biopsies per case of skin cancer diagnosed and diagnosed fewer melanomas in situ, suggesting that the diagnostic accuracy of PAs may be lower than that of dermatologists")

Isn't this disconnected from the reality of medical school competitiveness that is, at least on paper, supposed to filter students who are not going to use their highly sought after education and resources for largely clerical jobs? What's the point of the American Medical Association restricting new medical schools and artificially constricting the number of medical students when the top of their field is to service patients with elective treatments?

Tried getting an appointment in Denmark. “We don’t take any new patients”. A familiar story when trying to reach many specialists in European countries (Germany, Belgium). Except I doubt they’re getting 500k.

I had a similar experience - The dermatologist that I used to see moved to a new city and I needed to see one urgently for eczema. Primarily, I needed an RX.

For at least two months, no appointments were available with any derm in my network, so I immediately set up a telehealth appointment with one in another state, explained the condition, and got an RX on the same day.