title: A program to recruit and educate medical students to practice family medicine in underserved areas.
abstract: In an attempt to address the problem of physician maldistribution, Jefferson Medical College initiated the Physician Shortage Area Program (PSAP) in 1974, a special admissions program that preferentially selects applicants who intend to practice family medicine in physician shortage areas in Pennsylvania. Forty-seven students in four classes have been graduated from the program. Evaluation of these students during medical school shows that their academic performance has been similar to their classmates. Follow-up evaluation indicates that PSAP graduates are five times as likely as their peers (non-PSAP) to enter a family medicine residency program during the first postgraduate year (62% v 12%), and almost twice as likely to enter family medicine as a comparable group of non-PSAP students who originally entered Jefferson with plans of becoming a family physician (62% v 33%).
mesh_terms: D002321:Career Choice; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005194:Family Practice; D006801:Humans; D008507:Medically Underserved Area; D010414:Pennsylvania; D010820:Physicians / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D011365:Professional Practice Location; D013337:Students, Medical; D014481:United States