Residency bottleneck drives exodus of doctors from Hawaii

Residency bottleneck drives exodus of doctors from Hawaii

Every year, dozens of Hawaii’s newly minted doctors face the same decision: stay home — or leave to become one. And for many, the choice isn’t entirely theirs. Brennan Lee, a 27-year-old graduate of the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, matched into an anesthesiology residency at Tufts University in Massachusetts — a specialty not offered in Hawaii. “The program there is great,” Lee said. “I met with Tufts’ program directo…