Spokane is home to two medical schools. The University of Washington trains students here for their first year-and-a-half, in conjunction with Gonzaga University. Washington State University’s medical school is based in Spokane and it trains students in Spokane, Richland, Everett and Vancouver.
After medical students graduate, they train in specialty residency programs for the first few years of their careers.
Spokane has, for years, had a few residency programs, but not nearly enough slots to satisfy the demand from its graduating medical students. There are a variety of reasons for that, including the high cost of creating and maintaining residencies and a federal cap on the number of residency slots the government will fund. The latter may be changing…