Contrasting Incoming Medical Students' Attitudes Dual Degree vs Traditional Tracks

The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University (AMS) recently implemented a novel dual degree MD-ScM program in primary care and population medicine (PC-PM) that enrolls up to 24 of its nearly 144 yearly matriculants. The overarching goal of this track is to train medical students to become physician leaders who focus on issues in population medicine within primary care.

We conducted a baseline assessment of the students enrolled in this parallel track in comparison to our traditional students to identify characteristics of and group differences between students in the PC-PM program and traditional students. Data was collected from first-year students matriculating in the 2015 and 2016 academic years (N=277) using portions of nine validated surveys with an emphasis on caring for the underserved and cultural competence, professionalism, working in interprofessional teams, tolerance of ambiguity, empathy, patient-provider interactions, and patient safety/quality improvement.

We identified slightly higher significant baseline differences on three scales in which the PC-PM students (n=38) were higher than those in the traditional track students (n=239). These measured cultural competency (t[275]=-3.05, P=.003), professionalism (t[273]=-3.10, P=.002), and attitudes toward working with underserved populations (t[267]=2.31, P=.02).

The higher differences for these three elements may be important to the success of the PC-PM program. We plan to track the growth of the PC-PM students as well as our traditional students through their 4 years of medical school to investigate growth and development throughout the academic career.