well part of the shortage is the retarded way medical education works. all doctors are expected to be jacks of all trades, masters of all trades, and then a super master of one trade which they basically do 99% of the time to the point that the rest of what they learned withers. if i go to the emergency room and need stitches, the guy stitching up my hand doesn't need to know obscure gall bladder ailments and the symptoms to diagnose them, he just needs to know how to treat an open wound. he could have had six months of training as an apprenticeship then been hired full time to work at a hospital. yes, a general purpose jack of all trades doctor might be useful in a rural location where they can't afford to keep a couple dozen people on staff to cover everything, but in major cities or suburbs, there's more than enough injuries that "the guy who does all the stitching" would be a full time job and he'd only need to know that. the novelty of my father in law stitching up my son's toe on our dining room table at 8 at night to skip a trip to the emergency room wasn't worth the extra time and money he had to spend to learn a skill he hadn't used in decades.
United States