U.S. Medical School Graduates' Intentions to Pursue Patient Care and Non-clinical Career Activities

With a predicted shortage of 13,500 to 86,000 physicians across specialties by 2036, there is a need to graduate students who will enter full-time clinical practice. However, the breadth of U.S. medical graduates' intended career activities has not been studied recently.

To identify factors associated with medical graduates' plans to provide full-time patient care and to describe other career activities.

This was a cross-sectional study of 2016-2021 data from the Association of American Medical Colleges Graduation Questionnaire (GQ), an annual survey of all medical students at MD-granting schools in the U.

The associations between predictor variables (graduation year, demographics, personal factors, medical school experience) and graduates' patient care plans (full-time, part-time, no patient care).

Of 119,018 students graduating during the 6-year period, 90,262 (75.8%) were included in the study. Most respondents planned to provide full-time patient care (n = 78,331, 86.8%) vs part-time (n = 9,565, 10.6%), or no patient care (n = 2,366, 2.6%). The odds of full-time patient care increased between 2016 and 2021 (full-time vs part-time: OR 1.03, CI 1.02-1.05; full-time vs no patient care: OR 1.06, CI 1.03-1.08). In fully adjusted multivariate logistic regressions, younger age, white-only race, greater debt, and less disengagement from burnout were associated with full-time care compared to part-time or no patient care. Most respondents (n = 66,702, 75.9%) intended to engage in two or more non-patient care activities.

While many assume that medical students are being dissuaded from clinical practice, the proportions of students anticipating full-time clinical care has been increasing. Students also intend to incorporate a wide variety of non-clinical activities into their careers.