A program to recruit and educate medical students to practice family medicine in underserved areas
H. K. Rabinowitz
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%).
