Familial factors in going to medical school

Attending medical school has long been known to be strongly familial. We set out to discover whether this tendency has been altered by recent procedures for selection of medical students. Preclinical medical students in the University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff and first-year zoology students completed a self-report questionnaire on the frequency of going to medical school among their first- and second-degree relatives. Thirteen per cent of the first degree relatives of the medical student proband group had attended medical school, compared with approximately 0.22% of the general population, giving a 'relative risk' of 61. Twenty-one per cent of the siblings over age 18 years of the medical student probands had been or were currently in a medical school, compared with 4% of the zoology student proband siblings. We conclude that going to medical school remains highly familial and this is probably largely determined by environmental/cultural and social factors. However, it is possible that genetic factors contribute in a non-specific way, e.g. via their influence on general intelligence.