Factors Affecting Specialty Choice Among Doctors Who Received Tuition Scholarships

The United States is projected to have a shortage of up to 46,000 primary care physicians by 2025. In many cases, medical students appear to select other specialties for financial reasons, including educational debt. Physicians who were part of two BS/MD programs and received full tuition and fee scholarships for college and medical school were surveyed to examine factors that may have impacted their specialty choice. This population of US students was selected because they do not have educational debt, so their choices could be examined independent of this influence.

One hundred forty physicians who graduated from the programs as of June 2013 were invited to complete a 32-question online survey. Descriptive statistics described the population. χ2 tests and nonparametric Wilcoxon rank-sum (Mann-Whitney) tests compared primary care and nonprimary care physicians as well as those initially interested in primary care who changed before medical school graduation versus those who went into primary care. Factor analysis and Student t-test examined trends among Likert scale questions.

For the physicians for whom contact information was available, 74 (53%) responded. Out of 74 respondents, 18 (24%) went into primary care. Perceptions of family medicine, comments from faculty, and lifestyle played a role in deterring students from primary care.

Full tuition and fee scholarships alone were not associated with more students choosing primary care.