| I requested information from the 1995 AAMC Graduation
Questionnaire. Michael Schuchert, a research analyst at AAMC, was gracious enough to
collect the information. I received the following information on the 294 senior medical
students that were interested in practicing in towns of less than 10,000 as compared to
all 13000 responding senior students. An indication of rural interest at this point may
not mean eventual rural practice nor is the analysis statistically validated, but
comparisons of the means are interesting.
Rural Interested Students for more details Rural-interested students are slightly older and more likely to be married and have kids. A few more are from rural backgrounds and have rural spouses, but the differences are small. Higher percentages of whites and females are rural-interested when compared to the group as a whole. Lower percentages of Hispanics and Asians show rural interest. Higher percentages are interested among those who are from public medical schools. Fewer are interested in research, but when interested, they are interested in researching health care delivery or social science. Family practice is by far the preferred specialty. Twice as many had decided on specialty before medical school began (30 vs 15%) so why can’t we pick better? Primary care components guided their career choice. Private group practice is also the preference with a significant group (71) interested in state/federal practice. This is not just a group committed by scholarships as this was three times the number of NHSC folks who responded. Twice as many rural-interested took rural and international electives. Twice as many did volunteer work at public health clinics and serving the underserved and community medicine electives. Graduates preferred the west and avoided the midwest in eventual state location plans. If you are in the midwest or southeast, few senior students are thinking about locating in your area. Programs to encourage students to stay in their states are still needed. Rural-interested students thought basic science, research, and hospital teaching was a bit excessive, and thought clinical skills, geriatrics, preventive, HIV, public health, and primary care issues lacked enough emphasis. Twice as many were dissatisfied with their medical education as compared to peers. Rural students expected substantially less future income. There were not major differences in debt, but rural students got somewhat less support from medical school loans and more support from private or other loan sources. What would life be like in 2020 if we got more of these rural-interested students? It is likely that physicians would have less of a corporate mentality. I would have to say that we could have a much nicer workforce balance with more primary care physicians, especially in rural and urban underserved areas. The major drawback is that they would likely walk all over the faculty, institutions, and programs that got in their way. There is time enough for a few quick observations. Seems like specific interventions to keep females interested are in order. Also it would be helpful for more widespread application of techniques to select more with rural interest or background. Interventions to encourage student membership and activity with volunteer, Christian, and other international associations could have long term impacts such as increasing the numbers of rural physicians. What if we required volunteer participation in US or international service projects as a criteria for medical school admissions? |
Last modified: May 10, 2002