Academic and Other Types of Appointments

About 83 percent of the MSTP graduates in the study who were employed in 1995 had one or more academic appointments (Table 6). This was a significantly higher proportion than that found in all other groups except for the group of non-MSTP M.D.-Ph.D.s from MSTP institutions. (A breakdown of 1995 employment by cohort and type of organization can be found in Appendix Table 6 of Appendix IV.) Most MSTP graduates also had an organizational affiliation that would indicate some clinical responsibilities, such as a position in a hospital, clinic, or private practice. Moreover, MSTP graduates were less likely than the MSTP M.D. only group and the groups of non-MSTP M.D.-Ph.D.s to be employed in independent private or group practices. MSTP graduates were also less likely than Ph.D. graduates to be employed in private industry.

Note: Columns total more than 100% because some individuals have positions in more than one type of organization.

There also were differences between MSTP graduates and other groups in the types of departments in which they held their academic appointments (Table 7). Based primarily on classifications found in AAMC publications,²⁵ departments were classified as either basic science departments or clinical departments (see Appendix I for a classification of academic departments).²⁶ Members of each group were categorized by whether they held appointments only in basic science departments, only in clinical departments, or in both. MSTP graduates were less likely than the M.D. only group to be only in a clinical department, and less likely than Ph.D. graduates to be only in a basic science department. No significant differences were found between MSTP graduates and the other groups of M.D.-Ph.D. recipients in the type of academic department in which they held an appointment in 1995.

Clinical Activities

Employment information contained in the curricula vitae, including both academic and non-academic appointments, indicated that 86 percent of the M.D. recipients from all groups in the study held clinically related positions in 1995.²⁷  By group, the percentages ranged from 81 for MSTP graduates to 91 for the MSTP M.D. only group; for non-MSTP M.D.-Ph.D.s from MSTP institutions and M.D.-Ph.D.s from non-MSTP institutions, the percentages were 87 and 90, respectively. (The difference between MSTP graduates and non-MSTP M.D.-Ph.D.s from MSTP institutions did not reach statistical significance.)

Types of Journal Publications

One way of characterizing the research conducted by MSTP graduates and members of the comparison groups is to examine the type of journals in which the results are published. Using categorizations contained in the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Current Contents Journal Coverage as of January 1996, journals listed in the curricula vitae of respondents were grouped into three primary categories: basic (journals classified by ISI as life or other natural sciences), clinical (classified by ISI as clinical medicine), and mixed types (classified by ISI as both life sciences and clinical medicine). Data were collected on the number of articles published by each individual in each of these categories. Table 8 shows, by cohort, the average distribution of publications by journal type.

1980

Within all groups, most articles appeared in journals classified as either basic or mixed types; relatively few articles appeared in journals classified as clinical. The pattern of results from these publication data is similar to the pattern found in the departmental affiliations shown in Table 7. MSTP graduates do not differ from other M.D.-Ph.D. recipients, but they are more likely to have publications in basic journals than the MSTP M.D. only group, and they are more likely than Ph.D. graduates to have publications in clinical or mixed-type publications. For all of the combined-degree groups, there is a tendency for the publications of recent cohorts (which are more likely than the publications of older cohorts to represent predoctoral research studies) to be more heavily concentrated in basic journals.