Medical education online
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Medical education online · Jan 2009
Person-oriented versus technique-oriented specialties: early preferences and eventual choice.
Students' selection of a specialty is an important decision in their career as a physician. While distinguishing primary care physicians from non-primary care specialists has served a purpose for how medicine is practiced and managed, considering alternative ways of grouping specialties is appropriate when exploring specialty decisions. ⋯ Students with an early preference for person-oriented specialties were more likely to choose a person-oriented specialty, whereas students with an early preference for technique-oriented specialties were less likely to enter a technique-oriented specialty.
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Medical education online · Jan 2009
Sponsorship of internal medicine subspecialty fellowships since 2000: trends and community hospital involvement.
Since 2002, market studies have predicted a physician shortage with an increasing need for future subspecialists. A Residency Review Committee (RRC) rule that restricted sponsorship of fellowships was eliminated in 2005, but the influence of this change on the number of fellowships is not known. We believed that the rules change might make it possible for community hospitals to offer fellowships. Our objectives were to determine the extent of change in the number of fellowships in university and community hospitals from 2000 through 2008, both before and after the RRC regulation change in 2005, and to determine whether community hospitals contributed substantially to the number of new fellowships available to internal medicine graduates. ⋯ The number of subspecialty fellowship programs and approved positions has increased dramatically in the last 8 years. Many of the new programs were at community hospitals. The change in RRC rules has been associated with increased availability of fellowship programs in the university and community hospital setting for subspecialty training.