The Healthcare Reform as a Critical Life Event: Investigating Medical Student Commitment to Medical Career Goals in a Time of Health Care Reform

Abstract

In order to understand medical students' perceptions of the HCR at this time in the process of its emergence, the proposed study conceptualizes the passage and implementation of the HCR as a neutral critical life event (CLE). A CLE is often, but not always, a negative event that disrupts the normal course of human life and progress, causing blockage or delay of goals such that those affected by the CLE must reevaluate the situation, the amount of disruption that the event caused, the likelihood of continuing striving for their current goals, and the resources that they can use to combat any imbalance that may have been caused by the event. For many medical students, the HCR may have disrupted expectations (e.g., what “being a physician” may entail), the normal flow of their lives, and progression toward their goals, causing reevaluation of current goal paths (e.g., “Do I still want to continue?”) and examination of resources to continue or change course (e.g., “Do I have too much student debt to quit?”). By framing the HCR within the conceptual framework of a CLE, the proposed study seeks to provide an understanding of the extent to which the HCR is affecting medical students' choice of future medical specialty as they progress through their medical education. Furthermore, choice of medical specialty is only one of many possible indicators of student adjustment to the HCR.