ANSWERING THE CALL TO MEDICINE
Is Being a Physician Inherited?
“ I don
’ t know about you,” the senior physician said to me at a social function,“ but none of my children wanted to go into medicine.” Another doctor spoke up and lamented that of her four children, only the youngest became a nurse practitioner, but none became physicians. I said that my three sons were software engineers and one a high school math teacher. We were all very proud of our children and what they had accomplished, but wondered if we had done something wrong. In fact, we could all recall colleagues who grew up in medical heritage families. Had things changed that much over the years, that careers in medicine were no longer inherited like Kentucky Derby box seats?
The more we discussed this, the more we questioned whether our
by TOM JAMES, MD
“ Mamas, don’ t let your babies grow up to be cowboys Don’ t let‘ em pick guitars or drive them old trucks Let‘ em be doctors and lawyers and such”-written by Ed Bruce( 1975), sung by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings( 1977)
perceptions were accurate or just reflective of our own observational biases. This meant we had to cast our academic review net out much farther. A New York Times review article based upon reports from the U. S. General Social Survey found that for all careers, sons were 2.7 times as likely as the general population to follow in their fathers’ career footsteps, and twice as likely to choose their mothers’ careers. Daughters, however, were 1.8 times as likely to follow their mothers’ work, and 1.7 times as likely to follow their fathers’ career path. 1
But how do the offspring of physicians vs. the children of non-doctors compare regarding career choice? As reported in this article, practicing physicians have kids who are / were doctors at 25 times the rate of the general population. This is much higher than for elementary and middle school teachers( 3 times the rate of the general population), bartenders( 10 times the rate) or lawyers( 18 times the general population rate). However the highest rate of kids’
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