Today's Medical Students Seek Controllable Lifestyle

Increasingly, U.S. medical students are choosing specialties with what experts are calling a "controllable lifestyle,” according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA; 2003; 290:1173-1178).

Lifestyle considerations were found to account for a little more than half (55%) of a student's choice, far outdistancing the income factor, which accounted for only 9%.
In many cases, students are selecting specialties that do not require long hours or evening or weekend work. This is particularly true of women who have or expect to have children. In 2002-2003, woman comprised about half of all entering medical students.

Dermatology is very popular today because it has few emergencies and requires no night or weekend hours, unlike surgery, which can demand 80-90 hours per week. In the past five years, the number of students choosing dermatology has increased by 40%. Some specialties, like radiology, may require long hours but are gaining in popularity because they do not require seeing patients on nights or weekends. Other favored specialties are anesthesiology and emergency department medicine, where doctors can go home after their shift ends.

The trend is a natural followup to the growing struggle of many doctors to balance the demands of their patients with their home and family needs. Aiding the situation, however, are new U.S. rules that now limit a resident's hours to 80 a week. The researchers who conducted the study analyzed three resident matching programs. They were led by Dr. E. Ray Dorsey, of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare (IL, USA; www.enh.org).


Related Links:
Evanston Northwestern Healthcare