Medicine/Psychiatry Combined Residencies

Looking over the match results from the last several years, it appears that the combined 5-year Internal Medicine/Psychiatry combined residency is slowly dying off (with a brief rebound in 2003):

////// Positions offered////// #filled US grads ///// #filled total

2001 /////41 ///////////////////////// 19 ////////////////// 23
2002 /////32 ////////////////////////// 14 /////////////////// 22
2003 /////31 ////////////////////////// 19 ///////////////////// 24
2004 /////26 ////////////////////////// 14 /////////////////////// 18
2005///// 23 ////////////////////////// 12 ////////////////////////// 17

This 5-year program combines the training of the 3-year internal medicine residency and the 4-year psychiatry residency. I think that the main reason that this residency program is shrinking is that the extra 1-2 years of training do not increase a doctor's income. It is hard to keep up in both specialities; most graduates end up practicing only one of the specialities. Previously many Med/Psych doctors did inpatient consultation psychiatry, but with the new Psychiatric subspeciality of Psychosomatic medicine, completing a med/psych residency no longer offers much of an advantage in this field.

SleepDoctor blog

Medlogs is taking a long time to list my new blog, so I thought that I would announce it this way, through my old blog.
Check out SleepDoctor.

thanks