The Affordable Care Act as a Critical Life Event: Developing a Measure of Medical Student Perceptions and Outcomes

Abstract

This research aims to understand medical students’ perceptions of the Healthcare Reform Law (HCRL) as a critical life event. A purposive sample of 171 medical students from years one through four at a Southeastern university responded to items regarding their demographics and the Healthcare Reform Thoughts Survey (HCRTS), based within the Critical Life Event (CLE) theoretical framework (Inglehart, 1991). Using a cross-sectional, quantitative methodology, and MANOVA analysis, results suggested medical students’ ratings of the HCRTS subscales vary by year, Wilks’ λ=.362, p