Career Development of the Project TALENT Physicians: Executive Summary and Final Report

摘要

Data from AIR's Project TALENT Longitudinal Study, the AMA, AAMC, and BHM were used to identify characteristics of individuals and their educational institutions that are related to medical career choices for TALENT's nationally representative sample of over 1600 physicians. Physicians in different sized communities and specialties were readily distinguished from each other as high school and as college students. The proportions of potential rural and primary care physicians among high ability high school students with science interests were estimated and found to be much higher than the proportions among qualified medical school applicants. Such applicants were not differentially eliminated in the process of selection into medical school. There is a need to concentrate efforts on altering the composition of the pool of medical school applicants, and these results can be used to help identify those most inclined to choose a general medical practice in a rural area.