The warnings have been sounded for a long time as physicians retire or leave the field of medicine. As the population both grows and ages, the need for practicing physicians is becoming more crucial even as their numbers are declining.

Elsewhere in this issue of The Valdosta Daily Times, you will read of two South Georgia groups that are battling that trend.

SGMC Health, based in Valdosta, has welcomed eight recent medical college graduates as the third class of resident physicians at the health system. Residency programs — officially called Graduate Medical Education — are when the trained physician gets to put his or her training to use under the watchful eye of an experienced doctor. Durations differ by specialty; SGMC Health’s program is in internal medicine and lasts three years. Only after completing their residencies can physicians practice medicine on their own.

The eight men and women accepted on Friday bring to 24 the number of residents at SGMC Health. Currently, they’re expanding the capacity of the local medical staff. Once they graduate, many will themselves become part of the staffs of area hospitals or clinics. On average, two of every three physicians will begin their practice within 100 miles of where they did their residency.

So, Valdosta is benefitting from their training now, and the whole of South Georgia may benefit in the future.

SGMC Health is not the only South Georgia hospital hosting residency programs. Albany’s Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital started the first in the region in 1993. More recently, Colquitt Regional Medical Center in Moultrie, Tift Regional in Tifton and Archbold Memorial Hospital in Thomasville have started programs.

Their resident physicians are likewise benefitting their communities now, but may benefit the whole of the region — including Valdosta — after their residencies end.

The opening of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine’s South Georgia campus in Moultrie in 2019 placed a medical college an hour away from Valdosta, but the college’s influence is certainly not limited to its home base.

In today’s newspaper, you can read how PCOM South Georgia students are working with Brooks County High School to prepare students for careers in the medical field. It’s part of a “pipeline” that PCOM South Georgia officials talked about even before the college’s doors officially opened. Both faculty and students are working to get high schoolers interested in the healthcare field, then to encourage them on to college, to medical school, to a residency program then ultimately to their own practices that will strengthen medical care throughout the area.

These efforts have value in and of themselves, but taken together with other programs and other outreach, they are critical to meeting the growing needs for medical professionals throughout the region.