Career paths of first-year resident physicians: a seven-year study

Much policy formulation and research on physician manpower supply and demand are based upon historical data on physicians or on medical students' attitudes toward career choices and expectations about future career plans. Neither of these sources provides the kind of information about specialty and location choices or recent graduates that planner require to design and evaluate effective policy. In order to obtain information on career decisions of young physicians, all 1968 first-year resident physicians were identified and their career were followed through the seven-year period from 1968 through 1975. The career decisions of this cohort were compared with the activity, specialty, and geographic distribution of all physicians in 1975 in an attempt to discern changes, or trends, in these decisions. Results of this evaluation indicate that young physicians are attracted to nonprimary-care specialties in greater numbers than were physicians in the past and are continuing the trend away from rural practice locations. Increasing numbers of women physicians are affecting these trends, and changes in the sex-composition of the physician stock must be taken into account in future forecasting efforts and in policy formulation activity.