Background: The United States is facing a primary care physician shortage. Internal medicine (IM) primary care residency programs have expanded substantially in the past several decades, but there is a paucity of literature on their characteristics and graduate outcomes.
Objective: We aimed to characterize the current US IM primary care residency landscape, assess graduate outcomes, and identify unique programmatic or curricular factors that may be associated with a high proportion of graduates pursuing primary care careers.
Design: Cross-sectional study PARTICIPANTS: Seventy out of 100 (70%) IM primary care program directors completed the survey.
Main measures: Descriptive analyses of program characteristics, educational curricula, clinical training experiences, and graduate outcomes were performed. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to determine the association between ≥ 50% of graduates in 2016 and 2017 entering a primary care career and program characteristics, educational curricula, and clinical training experiences.
Key results: Over half of IM primary care program graduates in 2016 and 2017 pursued a primary care career upon residency graduation. The majority of program, curricular, and clinical training factors assessed were not associated with programs that have a majority of their graduates pursuing a primary care career path. However, programs with a majority of program graduates entering a primary care career were less likely to have X + Y scheduling compared to the other programs.
Conclusions: IM primary care residency programs are generally succeeding in their mission in that the majority of graduates are heading into primary care careers.
Keywords: medical education-career choice; medical education-graduate; medical student and residency education; primary care; survey research.