Trends in training: Focus on emergency medicine

A research project was developed to study the process of professional socialization in graduate medical education by describing and analyzing the development of emergency medicine residencies in comparison to those of surgery and internal medicine. Based on the assumption that residency programs have a profound impact on the quality, distribution, and career patterns of physicians, researchers surveyed residents and residency directors in the three specialty groups to determine the following: characteristics of founders of the programs, factors influencing physicians to enter a specialty, variations in residency program organization and structure, and career patterns of physicians entering the specialty. Implications are drawn from the data and applied to the development of residency training.