Impact of Mandatory Neurology Clerkship Experience for Undergraduate Medical Students on Neurology Residency Applications
Patrick Callaghan1, Megan Esch2, Neil Holland2
1Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, 2Geisinger Medical Center
Objective:
To determine whether introducing a mandatory neurology clerkship into the 3rd year curriculum for undergraduate medical students affects the number of students entering neurology residency.
Background:
The United States faces a neurologist shortage due to an aging population with increasing burden of neurologic disease and lack of US medical students entering neurology residency. To address the latter, undergraduate medical education curriculum changes and teaching strategies to reduce students' fear of neurology and increase comfort with neuroscience have been described in the literature. However, whether these interventions have any effect on the number of students choosing to enter neurology residency has not been explored. This study sought to determine whether a neurology curriculum overhaul including the introduction of a mandatory neurology clerkship for 3rd year students can increase the number of students entering neurology residency and help combat the workforce gap.
Design/Methods:
This is a pre-post study comparing the number of students in each graduating class entering neurology residency before and after introducing a mandatory neurology clerkship in the curriculum. Chi-squared analysis was performed to compare data from the two groups.
Results:
A total of 621 students across 6 years of graduating classes were included in the analysis with 3-graduating classes before introducing the mandatory neurology clerkship experience and 3-graduating classes after. In the pre-test group, 7 of 307 students entered neurology residency compared to 21 of 314 students post-test (χ2 = 7.0046; p = 0.00813).
Conclusions:
The number of students entering neurology residency significantly increased after introduction of a mandatory clerkship into the 3rd year curriculum. Currently, only 56% of US allopathic and osteopathic medical schools require a core clerkship in neurology. Introducing neurology as a core rotation into more US medical schools could encourage more US medical graduates to enter the field and help address future physician shortages.