The Impact of Medical School Loans and the Promise of Loan Repayment on Entry Into a Pediatric Academic Career

General vs Subspecialty Pediatrics

“…The influence of educational debt on residents' career choices is less clear. 18,19 Consistent with our findings, several past studies have also supported the conclusion that debt does not influence career choices. 8,14,18 However, Hardie and Jaskiewicz 20 recently demonstrated an inverse association between the percentage of pediatric residents choosing subspecialty training between 1986 and 1998 and the mean educational debt during the same period.…”

“…10 Although there is no consistent effect of debt on residents' career choices, training programs should consider additional financial incentives and loan repayment programs to facilitate residents' continued training in subspecialty medicine. 10,19,20 An important question is to what extent these results are indicative of national trends among pediatric residents. While the results represent data generated at a single institution over a 12-year period, we note that our program has a national base distribution of trainees from across the country.…”

Career choice in academic medicine

“…A review of these abstracts led to retrieval of 85 full‐text articles for assessment and 25 studies were subsequently identified for inclusion. The reasons for excluding articles were the absence of a description of methods used in a qualitative study (1 study 18 ), the inability to extract data (3 studies 19–21 ), the target population included medical students, program directors, or nonphysicians (10 studies 22–31 ), the research question about career choice in academic medicine was not addressed (23 studies 32–54 ), the inclusion of an editorial or commentary without description of methods and results (22 studies 3,12,55–74 ), and insufficient details about the target population (1 study 75 ).…”

Variables Associated With Full-Time Faculty Appointment Among Contemporary U.S. Medical School Graduates: Implications for Academic Medicine Workforce Diversity

“…As previous research suggested that financial issues such as debt might deter pursuit of an academic-medicine career among medical graduates, 12–14 we included total (both premedical and medical school) debt at graduation ($150,000 or more; $100,000-$149,999; $50,000-$99,999; $1-$49,999—each compared to no debt, [the reference group]) as a variable in our model.…”