Abstract
The number of ps in the United States has increased dramatically in the last decade. Manpower predictions suggest an oversupply of ps will occur. Since the supply – demand relationship is sluggish (characterized by a significant delay between decision to persue the career (application for fellowship) and entry into the job market, the potential for disruption / dissatisfaction among individual trainees and the profession as a whole is significant. Additionally, there is a geographic maldistribution of ps within the United States. We analyzed membership data over the past 15 years, both temporally and geographically, to further understand these issues.
Materials and Methods
Data was obtained from the current APSA database. Date of APSA membership and zipcode were analyzed. Zipcodes were converted to latitude and longitude points in a xml (extensible markup language) database, via a Ruby scripting language program written by the author. These datapoints were then geomapped with Google Maps.
Results