Studentsʼ evolving attitudes toward family medicine and specialty choices at one medical school
- 1 October 1991
- journal article
- Published by Wolters Kluwer Health in Academic Medicine
- Vol. 66 (10) , 625-7
- https://doi.org/10.1097/00001888-199110000-00021
Abstract
Seventy members of the class that entered Dartmouth Medical School in 1984 responded in 1984 and again in 1988 to statements regarding their attitudes towards family medicine , their general criteria for choosing a specialty , and their concerns about lifestyle ; also , the students were asked in 1984 to indicate their interest in a career in family medicine and in 1988 to indicate their long-term specialty choices . The students ' attitudes towards family medicine were generally positive on entry and became even more positive by their fourth year . Of the 25 students who indicated an initial interest in family medicine , six chose residencies in this field . Because most of the students studied showed strengthening agreement with both ( 1 ) the belief that family practitioners are particularly capable of providing comprehensive care and ( 2 ) the desire to concentrate on a specialty that would enable them to feel very competent and sure of their work , the authors hypothesize that the students may have feared that their desire for competence and certainty was incompatible with the comprehensiveness of family medicine .Keywords
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