The effect of a course in family medicine on future career choice: a long-range follow-up of a controlled experiment in medical education.
The career choices and professional behavior of three cohorts of students who participated in a family medicine program were studied by mail questionnaire. Cohort I (1957--1960), as part of an educational experiment, had been randomly assigned to the course; unselected classmates were used as controls. Cohort II (1961--1965) and Cohort III (1966--1970) were volunteers; alphabetically adjacent classmates were used as a comparison group. The results suggest that the impact of a given medical school course on future behavior must be evaluated in the context of general medical school orientation and societal trends extraneous to the school itself.
D001900:Boston; D002321:Career Choice; D003657:Decision Making; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D005194:Family Practice / Q000193:education*; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires