Pediatric generalist training: graduate medical education at a crossroads.

There is a growing consensus that the United States is training more physicians than it needs or can afford. Public resources are likely be used to bend the graduate medical education enterprise increasingly toward the production of generalist physicians to practice primary care. Pediatrics, with its generalist tradition, can stand tall at this crossroads if it renews its commitment to training high quality generalists and assumes a leadership position as graduate medical education moves from the hospital into the community.