Factors associated with the perception that debt influences physicians' specialty choices

To investigate the responses of individual physicians to educational debt.

Data on 5,175 physicians were taken from the 1991 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Survey of Young Physicians, a nationally representative survey of physicians under age 45 who had had two to ten years of practice experience as of 1991. The physicians' overall perceptions about the extents to which debt had been an important determinant of specialty choice were explored using multivariate logistic regression analyses.

Only 3.2% of the physicians indicated that debt had had a major influence on their specialty choices. About half (56%) of those who felt that debt had been a major influence indicated that they had foregone some training because of their debt levels. Controlling for debt level, the physicians who had had children during medical school and those whose parents had less education and lower incomes were more likely to say that debt had been an influence (p < .05). An examination of the specialties that the physicians reported having foregone because of debt indicated that these physicians had reacted to debt in different ways--some had chosen more specialized fields while others had chosen more generalized fields.

While the overall effect of debt was small, some individuals were influenced by debt in a variety of ways. Paying attention to the effects of debt on this small population may improve training for some physicians and help better target programs that attempt to influence physicians by alleviating debt.