BY CINDY BORGMEYER
"Mentors and role models" topped several lists of factors influencing medical students' specialty choices developed during the Family Medicine Student Interest Summit May 21 - 22 in Overland Park, Kan.
Medical students, residents, family medicine educators, practicing FPs and others worked in small groups to zero in on factors -- many of them drawn from the University of Arizona, Tucson, study on student interest and Future of Family Medicine project recommendations -- they considered both important and modifiable.
"Good mentors can be trained; they need not be born," said Robert Raspa, M.D., of Orange Park, Fla., chair of the Commission on Resident & Student Issues.
Everyone's a role model
Although the two groups -- mentors and role models -- are related, they are not identical, pointed out Deborah McPherson, M.D., assistant director of the AAFP Division of Medical Education, in an interview after the meeting.
"In the truest sense, mentoring is a retrospective experience," McPherson said. "It's a relationship that develops over time." Often, it's only when students or residents reflect on their training that they recognize who served as their mentors.
On the other hand, McPherson added, "Everyone in family medicine is a role model to somebody. Students, especially, pay attention to our work and values." Exposure to a negative family medicine role model, agreed several summit attendees, is worse than having none at all. (See related story at http://www.aafp.org/fpr/20040700/4.html.)
Pick the right students
Summit participants also gave high priority to issues surrounding the medical school admissions process -- specifically, "getting the right people on the bus," as one attendee called it, using terminology from Jim Collins' book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... And Others Don't.
That task, participants agreed, means identifying family medicine hopefuls -- students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, for example -- at an early stage in the educational pipeline and then finding ways to help them navigate the path through medical school and into residency.
And then there's the issue of the medical school curriculum.
"It'd be nice if they (family medicine hopefuls) all walked around with 'family medicine waiting to happen' on their chests," said Michael King, M.D., of Lexington, Ky., a resident delegate to CRSI. "I was that person in medical school. I knew what I wanted to do; I just didn't know that was family medicine until I saw it in school."
By the end of the summit, the groups had devised a short list of strategies and action plans to tackle the key modifiable factors identified. A full report of the summit and resulting recommendations will be considered by the Academy and other participating or interested organizations and their leadership this summer.
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