Career Predictors

Robert C. Bowman, M.D.

Although percentages can be generated, the final decision for a career or location is an individual decision. No admissions committee can predict success, distinction, or failure. Too many unknowns and scores and backgrounds only complicate the matter. Same with predicting careers. Higher or lower probability is possible, but still surprises will occur. For national workforce planning however, the following may be of assistance.

• Consistent Family Medicine Choice By Medical School - Over the recent graduates the choice of family medicine has remained steady and predictable by student origins and medical school types.
• Regional Choice of Family Medicine - There is variation by region. For some populations that are in eastern or western locations, the family medicine choice will vary by longitude.
• Older Graduate Career Probabilities - computations of the career choices of older graduates of each allopathic school.
• Family Medicine Central: National Comparisons of Workforce
• Older Premeds - growth from 6 to 4000 in the past few years characterizes the desire to become a physician and to overcome the barriers of income and education in the nation that prevent admission for those most likely to distribute where needed
• Core Metro Origins - the largest group of medical students and the most powerful, and the least likely to distribute. This is the group that provides the most numbers of rural doctors. Females in this group have greater rural choice than males. Understanding this group is understanding much of medical education.
• Physician Careers By MCAT Groups  compare the major physician careers that are chosen by 90% of medical school graduates by MCAT level. The elite schools distribute poorly. Schools selecting and training for family medicine distribute best.
• Multidimensional Choice of Family Medicine Compare by Birth Origins, Age, School Type, Region of the Nation, a voyage of exploration for a nation looking for solutions
• Consistent Choice of Family Medicine - Most students are inconsistent in career choice. Those choosing family medicine are consistent in choice over decades and this may well involve relative socioeconomic position. Those most likely to choose family medicine are being eliminated from admissions to US allopathic medical schools
• Older Graduates and Rural Choice by Medical School - each medical school is listed with the percentage of rural graduates. In most schools older graduates make a contribution to rural workforce beyond rural birth origins. Medical schools can select graduates who are more likely to choose rural careers or family medicine or office-based primary care in poverty locations, but few follow through and actually do so. Older graduates do have greater choice of rural locations, there is some variation by school that may have to do with education in the state, admissions, and school mission.

The following are Pearson Correlations between the % of medical students from US allopathic medical schools that choose a specialty or career path, and the various independent variables from MCAT, age, longitude, state education, instate born admissions, % Asian ethnicity, % rural born, % white, NIH Amount

See article Before Admissions to note declines in many of the above and explain table. It is possible to understand many things about US workforce at the time of matriculation or before. Without changes in admissions, there is less chance of students choosing certain specialties in great need in the nation.