Impact of women and foreign medical graduates on specialty distribution of U.S. house officers

The increase in the number of women and the decline in the number of foreign medical graduates (both foreign- and U.S.-born graduates of medical schools outside the United States) in U.S. medicine are studied by comparing the specialty distributions of U.S. house officers in the 1973-74 and 1979-80 training years. The joint effect of the distribution of sex and foreign versus U.S. medical graduate status on specialty selection is also examined. The results showed that although male and female house officers who were graduates of U.S. medical schools increased in number over the seven-year period, the rate of increase for females was over 12 times as great as the rate for men. By contrast, although male and female house officers who were graduates of foreign medical schools decreased over the same period, the rate of decrease for males was over nine times as great as the rate for women. U.S.-educated men and foreign-educated men had similar distributions across the specialties, whereas U.S.-educated women and foreign-educated women differed not only from each other but also from both groups of men. The specialty selection of foreign-educated females in the 1979-80 training year was especially different from the other three groups. Implications of these data are discussed in the context of the argument that there is a physician surplus.