“We have been seeing really, really sick people,” he said. He had firsthand experience with the novel coronavirus, too — he caught it in March and recovered after a few feverish days.
Despite all that, the 29-year-old doctor cannot find a company in his hometown of Houston ready to hire him when he graduates next year. Durrani has searched since the summer, “getting on calls with recruiters and hospitals and whatnot,” he said. “And I haven’t locked anything down.”
Like him, many in this class of emergency medicine physicians — young doctors, called residents, who are training in this specialty — are struggling to find full-time employment, even while they work on the front lines treating covid-19 patients.
The dearth of jobs is the result of a domino effect: Many people stayed away from hospital emergency rooms this past year, wary of contracting the virus. As patient numbers dropped, emergency departments brought in less money. As a result, cash-strapped employers stopped recruiting new doctors. ...
