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Biomedical subjects

A G Swanson

Publications and source records attributed to A G Swanson.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

A national, interdisciplinary consortium of primary care organizations to promote the education of generalist physicians.

This essay begins with the history from 1989 through late 1991 of the Primary Care Organization's Consortium (PCOC), a group of representatives from nine major academic and professional organizations for primary care specialties. The PCOC was formed to discuss what might be done to reverse the alarming decrease in the number of medical students who choose primary care specialties. The article reviews some of the conditions that many believe have caused the continuing move away from primary care careers, and concludes with a description of the PCOC's program to encourage medical students to choose primary care careers, and the new opportunities for collaborative planning of such programs that are now available to medical schools. The PCOC's success in defining its program is due to a process of interdisciplinary planning and collaboration at the national level that hopefully will facilitate similar collaboration among medical school departments.

Career Choice↗
PubMed1989

Specialty choice.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Career Choice↗
PubMed1986

United States citizens studying medicine abroad. Their backgrounds and test performance.

To acquire information about the characteristics of U.S. citizens who had recently studied medicine abroad, the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) and the Association of American Medical Colleges merged independently collected data on a study group of 10,460 U.S. citizens who attended 359 medical schools in 75 foreign countries and who took their first ECFMG examination between 1978 and 1982. The study group was markedly heterogeneous: 21 percent were not U.S. citizens at birth, 32 percent did not have English as a native language, and 12 percent had two or more years of undergraduate college education in Puerto Rico. Sixty-seven percent resided in New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, or Puerto Rico, and 74 percent studied medicine in Mexico or the Caribbean. Forty-six percent passed the ECFMG examination on their first attempt, and 22 percent passed a subsequent examination. Only 45 percent had applied to a U.S. medical school, and 65 percent had taken the Medical College Admission Test. The means of the college grade-point averages, known for 39 percent of the study group, and of the scores on the admission test, known for 65 percent, were lower than those of both accepted and unaccepted applicants to U.S. medical schools in the 1976 and 1978 entering classes. The finding that 55 percent of the study group did not apply to a U.S. medical school does not support the widely held belief that most, if not all, U.S. citizens who attend foreign medical schools do so only after several unsuccessful attempts to gain admission to a U.S. school.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Preclinical curriculum characteristics and institutional performance on NBME. Part I.

A study was conducted that analyzed the relationship between various characteristics of the preclinical curriculum and institutional performance on the Part I examination of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) at a sample of 85 U.S. medical schools. Total scheduled hours per week was the single curriculum characteristic having a positive and significant relationship with institutional NBME examination performance. However, when the data were controlled by medical school selectivity in admissions and institutional policy on the taking of the examination, total scheduled hours per week failed to make a significant contribution to the prediction of performance. The results were viewed as failing to provide support and justification for intense preclinical curriculum loads on the basis that this would enhance NBME examination performance. The authors conclude that simple comparisons of schools on the basis of mean NBME examination performance are meaningless unless the entering abilities of students and school policies on the examination are taken into account. The authors also suggest that those schools that prescribe heavy and intense preclinical curriculum loads should reexamine those policies in light of recommendations of the Project Panel on the General Professional Education of the Physician and College Preparation for Medicine.

Certification↗
PubMed1985

Effects of affirmative action in medical schools. A study of the class of 1975.

In the early 1970s, affirmative-action programs were introduced to accomplish a number of social goals, including increasing the supply of minority physicians and improving the health care of the poor. To assess the success of such programs, we analyzed data on people who graduated from U.S. medical schools in 1975 to determine how specialty choice, practice locations, patient populations served, and board-certification rates differ between minority and nonminority graduates. A larger proportion of minority graduates (55 per cent vs. 41 per cent, P less than 0.001) chose the primary-care specialties of family practice, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, and obstetrics-gynecology. Significantly more minority physicians (12 per cent vs. 6 per cent, P less than 0.01) practiced in locations designated as health-manpower shortage areas by the federal government and had more Medicaid recipients in their patient populations (31 per cent for blacks, 24 per cent for Hispanics, 14 per cent for whites; P less than 0.001). Physicians from each racial or ethnic group served disproportionately more patients of their own racial or ethnic group (P less than 0.001), but minority physicians did not serve significantly more persons from other racial or ethnic minority groups than did nonminority physicians. Many minority physicians served patient populations much like those of their nonminority colleagues, which indicates that substantial integration of the medical marketplace has taken place. Significantly fewer minority graduates had become board-certified by 1984 (48 per cent vs. 80 per cent, P less than 0.001), and most of this disparity was associated with differences in premedical-school characteristics and in the patient populations they served. Our analysis shows that minority graduates of the medical school class of 1975 are fulfilling many of the objectives of affirmative-action programs.

Certification↗