THOMASVILLE, Ga. (WTXL) — Archbold and the Medical College of Georgia are teaming up to train more doctors locally.
- The program expands internal medicine residency slots and adds training for medical students.
- The goal is to address Georgia’s growing physician shortage, especially in rural areas.
- WATCH THE VIDEO to hear from from the program's director.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
South Georgia just doesn't have enough doctors. For a lot of people, that means driving hours just to get care.
I'm showing you how Archbold and the Medical College of Georgia are working together to fix that by training more doctors right here in Thomasville.
This new partnership is aimed at building a pipeline not just for future primary care doctors, but also specialists.
It brings together both medical students and residents to train right locally.
"In the state of Georgia there are two places where you can become a subspecialist. One is at MCG and the other is at Emory. So we are extremely fortunate and grateful that we can partner with one of the two institutes in partnering with MCG," said Dr. Raul Santos, Program Director.
Dr. Santos tells me about 60% of internal medicine residents go on to pursue subspecialties like nephrology, cardiology, or gastroenterology.
Having this program gives Archbold and Thomasville as a whole a real shot at becoming a place where future specialists want to train, grow, and eventually stay.
"I've been here for 29 years and in the course of 29 years I have experienced the shortage and I've seen it first-class as people retire, they're not coming in," said Dr. Santos.
That's a reality playing out statewide.
By the year 2030, Georgia is expected to be short more than 8,000 doctors, including over 2,100 in primary care, according to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.
This partnership with MCG is meant to change that.
It includes third- and fourth-year medical students who'll start training here in January 2026, plus expanded residency slots. The change grows Archbold's internal medicine program from 5 to 8 residents per year.
It's not just students who benefit. Faculty say it's brought new energy to the entire medical community.
"The residents have brought a entire new breath of life of kind of fresh air of a culture of education back to the medical community here and I really you know in a time when otherwise docs are really ground down by the volume of patients and the and the hassles of documentation and regulations and things like that it's really fun and exciting to get back involved with the roots of why we went into medicine in the first place and to be inspired by these young doctors," said Doctor B. Clay Sizemore, Associate Program Director.
The first group of third- and fourth-year medical students from the Medical College of Georgia will officially start training at Archbold in January 2026. Thomasville will become their home base.
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