Choosing psychiatry: the importance of psychiatric education in medical school

Because of the recent decline in the number of U.S. medical graduates choosing to specialize in psychiatry, it is important to reexamine the process of how a student chooses a psychiatric career. The author explores the influence of medical school psychiatric education on the subsequent choice of a psychatric career. The quality of medical school education was measured roughly by priority scores assigned during National Institutes of Mental Health peer review of grant applicatons from medical schools across the United States. Priority scores correlated positively (.17 to .29) with the percentage of each school's graduates entering psychiatric training. The author discusses the implications of these correlations.