Page 22 - JSOM Fall 2024

trend regarding “operational” or “wartime” specialties. We an- FIGURE 1 Students’ intended specialty by operational capability.
alyzed these three groups (clear, limited, or minimal/no opera-
tional capability) using the same Fisher exact test with Monte
Carlo simulation. All the statistical analyses were performed
using SAS Version 9.4 (SAS Institute, Inc. Cary, NC; https://
www.sas.com/en_th/home.html; purchased by the study unit)
and Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA;
https://office.microsoft.com/excel; purchased by the study
unit). A P value of less than .05 was considered statistically
significant.

Results
With 871 respondents out of 984 graduates, the GQ response
rate was 88.5% (range, 77.2%–98.8%) throughout the years
analyzed. The respondents’ demographics are summarized in The percentage of students intending to go into specialties considered
Table 1. There were no statistically significant differences in to have clear, limited, or minimal operational capability. There were no
age, gender, racial/ethnic identity, intended degree, marital sta- statistically significant differences in the distribution of student spe-
cialty interest over these years (P=.771).
tus, or dependent status over that time. Of the participants,
64% were men and 36% were women. with limited or minimal operational capability. Figure 1 sum-
marizes the distribution of students indicating interest across
Regarding operational relevance, there were no statistically specialties from 2015 to 2020.
significant differences in the distribution of student specialty
interest from 2015 to 2020 (P=.771). Each year, the majority Most students (69.3%–79.3%) indicated they would likely
of USU students (65.2%–70.5%) indicated they were inter- choose medical school again. There were no statistically signif-
ested in specialties of “clear operational capability” (Figure 1). icant differences in the proportion of students indicating they
Of these, family medicine, emergency medicine, and internal would or would not go to medical school again over these
medicine were the most popular (Table 2). Despite changes to years, as summarized in Figure 2. For analysis, the propor-
DHA policy in 2017, there was no significant corresponding tion of students indicating that they would (“yes” or “proba-
increase or decrease in students indicating interest in specialties bly yes”) choose medical school again was compared with the

TABLE 1 Demographic Characteristics of Surveyed USU Medical Students
No. (%) of respondents
Variable 2015; n=155 2016; n=151 2017; n=134 2018; n=127 2019; n=166 2020; n=161 P value
Graduating age, y 0.089
<24 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 1 (0.8) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0)
24–26 45 (29.0) 46 (30.5) 48 (35.8) 42 (33.1) 63 (38.0) 65 (40.4)
27–29 65 (41.9) 61 (40.4) 44 (32.8) 52 (40.9) 57 (34.3) 51 (31.7)
30–32 23 (14.8) 20 (13.2) 26 (19.4) 10 (7.9) 21 (12.7) 17 (10.6)
>32 22 (14.2) 24 (15.9) 16 (11.9) 22 (17.3) 25 (15.1) 28 (17.4)
Gender 0.436
Men 108 (69.7) 95 (62.9) 87 (64.9) 83 (65.4) 105 (63.3) 96 (59.6)
Women 47 (30.3) 56 (37.1) 47 (35.1) 44 (34.6) 61 (36.7) 65 (40.4)
Degree 0.812
MD 154 (99.4) 151 (100.0) 132 (98.5) 126 (99.2) 165 (99.4) 160 (99.4)
MD & PhD 1 (0.6) 0 (0.0) 2 (1.5) 1 (0.8) 1 (0.6) 1 (0.6)
Marital status* 0.396
Single 76 (51.7) 54 (43.2) 51 (42.1) 76 (46.6) 66 (41.8)
Married 68 (46.3) 69 (55.2) 68 (56.2) 86 (52.8) 85 (53.8)
Divorced 3 (2.0) 2 (1.6) 1 (0.8) 1 (0.6) 6 (3.8)
Separated 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 1 (0.8) 0 (0.0) 1 (0.6)
No. of dependents* 0.654
0 120 (81.6) 96 (78.6) 92 (76.0) 131 (80.4) 119 (75.3)
1 11 (7.5) 13 (10.4) 10 (8.3) 16 (9.8) 17 (10.8)
2 8 (5.4) 9 (7.2) 14 (11.6) 8 (4.9) 15 (9.5)
3 4 (2.7) 7 (5.6) 4 (3.3) 6 (3.7) 6 (3.8)
4 4 (2.7) 0 (0.0) 1 (0.8) 2 (1.2) 1 (0.6)
Note: P values were calculated with the Fisher exact test with Monte Carlo simulation.
*Questions regarding marital status and number of dependents were not included in the 2015 questionnaire. Responses regarding ethnic/racial
identity were excluded for 2015 due to variation in the way this question was formatted during that year.
USU = Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

20 | JSOM Volume 24, Edition 3 / Fall 2024