A program to recruit and educate medical students to practice family medicine in underserved areas

In an attempt to address the problem of physician maldistribution, Jefferson Medical College initiated the Physician Shortage Area Program (PSAP) in 1974, a special admissions program that preferentially selects applicants who intend to practice family medicine in physician shortage areas in Pennsylvania. Forty-seven students in four classes have been graduated from the program. Evaluation of these students during medical school shows that their academic performance has been similar to their classmates. Follow-up evaluation indicates that PSAP graduates are five times as likely as their peers (non-PSAP) to enter a family medicine residency program during the first postgraduate year (62% v 12%), and almost twice as likely to enter family medicine as a comparable group of non-PSAP students who originally entered Jefferson with plans of becoming a family physician (62% v 33%).