Age and Family Medicine and Office Based Primary Care not FPGP

US MD Grads were compared across age and career choice for the recent 40% of graduates in current 2005 locations and careers. Increasing age at graduation does mean greater choice of family medicine, primary care, and office primary care not including family physicians. However there are few graduates older than 35. Basically for the usual ages of medical school graduates, older age contributes to increased primary care choice mainly through the contributions of family medicine.

Older age (over 29 yrs) is associated with higher retention in office based care for internal medicine residency graduates, an important contribution to total primary care numbers.

Age at Graduation % FPGP # FPGP % Office PC not in FP # Office PC not in FP
23 5.5% 23 12.4% 88
24 8.5% 318 12.2% 983
25 8.5% 1060 12.0% 3407
26 11.8% 8461 11.1% 21592
27 14.0% 6330 11.2% 14098
28 14.4% 3456 11.1% 7363
29 14.7% 2223 11.6% 4613
30 15.5% 1657 11.7% 3302
31 16.1% 1282 12.1% 2466
32 17.2% 1021 11.4% 1854
33 18.5% 851 11.7% 1492
34 17.8% 653 12.8% 1183
35 20.0% 586 12.0% 986
36 19.6% 461 13.5% 833
37 22.7% 428 12.9% 685
38 23.6% 356 13.8% 571
39 24.1% 305 14.1% 503
40 22.7% 222 13.4% 370
41 23.9% 187 15.6% 316
42 28.4% 163 13.6% 233
43 30.5% 134 15.0% 200
44 27.4% 89 11.1% 117
45 26.7% 68 13.7% 109
46 34.4% 66 16.4% 84
47 36.6% 41 16.7% 54
48 37.4% 34 11.1% 40
49 32.7% 18 11.1% 24
50 26.1% 12 13.0% 12
51 56.5% 13 13.0% 11

 

Age and FP Physicians - main page on this topic

Older Medical Student Career Choices

Distribution and Physician Specialties

 Distribution is all about FP

 

Practice Location

Accelerated FP

US Population 1998

1987 - 2000 FPGP

1987 - 2000 Office Based Primary Care Not FPGP

1987 - 2000 Not Office Based Primary Care

Urban

50 %

77.6 %

73.9 %

89.6 %

90.3 %

Large Rural

16.5 %

9.3 %

10.5 %

5.9  %

5.4 %

Medium Rural

23.7 %

6.9 %

9.7 %

2.7  %

2.0 %

Isolated Rural

9.4 %

6.1 %

4.8 %

0.9  %

0.7%

Physician Workforce Studies

www.ruralmedicaleducation.org