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Ed Yeates ReportingPeople in a position to prevent what doctors say is a looming crisis in health care gathered by the hundreds today at LDS Hospital.
They picked up real hearts, drew samples from a robotic arm, and monitored blood flow in the carotid artery. They saw their own hearts on screen and cardiac rhythms that synchronize life itself, like some finely tuned orchestra.
Doctors they are not, but doctors they very well could become, peppered amongst the hundreds of middle and high school students who converged on LDS Hospital.
Gatherings like this are getting more and more important now because physicians say it's this generation that's got to fill a void. There's a growing void of specialized physicians and surgeons, like cardiologists, neurologists, and more who are, even now, dwindling in numbers.
Brent Muhlestein, M.D., Cardiology Research, LDS Hospital: "My fellows that finish the training have available five or six-thousand different jobs, but there's only 300 fellows that graduate each year."
Some students here are already aware of the pending crisis.
"I think it's going to get worse as the baby boomers retire."
"If we get like a bunch of cardiologists then there will be fewer people who go without heart transplants, and so we will be able to save more people."
Fill these specialized slots they must, or all the emerging technology goes for naught.
"We can think up new ways to make the surgery easier and faster and to make sure the body doesn't reject what we're doing."
Not all in attendance today will fill the void, but those who do are already eager to partner with this high tech.
"I kind of feel this generation is a little smarter and so they might be able to fill those careers."
Arrogant - No! Confident - Yes!
