Influence of uncertainty about a specialty's administrative status on students' specialty choices at a Florida medical school.

ABSTRACT

At the University of South Florida College of Medicine, there was a statistically significant drop in the number of 1990 graduates entering family practice residencies compared with the numbers entering during the previous decade. A retrospective analysis was carried out to determine what factors could have produced such a change and what specialties benefitted. The only factor identified was an administrative policy change that threatened the departmental status of the family medicine unit. Psychiatry was the only specialty choice that showed significant increases. The findings of this study suggest that medical students' selection of family practice as a specialty choice is detrimentally influenced by uncertainty about the family medicine unit's departmental status, and that family medicine may be competing with psychiatry for students' interest.