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The Path to Medicine: Exploring The Pre-Medical Phase of Physician Socialization
Kaiser, John William
Kaiser, John William
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Abstract
The field of medical sociology has historically been interested in the process of how individuals are socialized into becoming physicians. However, little work has qualitatively investigated the initial period of postsecondary education that aspiring physicians go through: their time as undergraduate students. The pre-medical period can be just as important for the process of physician socialization as later periods of medical education and physician training, as this initial period represents these “premeds” first vested steps on their path towards becoming a doctor. This project examined the motives, perceptions, and experiences that premeds had towards their pre-medical phase of physician socialization. I conducted three inductive studies using qualitative methodologies to fill gaps in the literature on premed socialization. From April 2023 to November 2023, I conducted fifty-three interviews with premed students at the University of Kansas. In my first study, I investigated these premeds’ perceptions about their non-natural science coursework. Premeds perceived their non-natural science courses as helping to foster a better understanding of social processes and develop useful professional soft skills. In my second study, I investigated why premeds were interested in pursuing specific medical specialties. I examined differences in responses about interest in pursuing primary care and non-primary care specialties. I found that premeds were more motivated to pursue primary care specialties because of pro-social and altruistic desires, while premeds interested in non-primary care specialties were more motivated by the individualist and technical aspects of these specialties. I also found that physician shadowing and physician role models played a large role in shaping a premed’s interests in particular medical specialties. In my third study, I investigated what the pandemic era experiences of premeds from marginalized racial and class backgrounds were. I found that premeds from these backgrounds faced several challenges that presented obstacles to them on their path to medicine. These included financial struggles and difficulties finding a racially-concordant on-campus community. However, these premeds were able to persist through these obstacles by participating in extracurricular clubs and enrolling in pipeline programs. In conducting these three studies, I found that premeds used several aspects of premed socialization (i.e. their coursework, specialties of interest, and personal persistence when facing obstacles) to craft unique “applicant” identities. These applicant identities are developed by premeds to help increase their chances of matriculating into medical school.
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Date
2024-01-01
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University of Kansas
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This item contains archived web content.
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Kaiser_ku_0099D_19585.pdf
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- Embargoed until 2174-05-31
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Keywords
Sociology, Medical education, Physician socialization, Premed, Professional identity formation