What Have We Learned about Internal Medicine Resident Selection of Future Careers?

Understanding what attracts trainees to a specialty, in this case nephrology, is elusive. Some factors relate to the individual, their personality andneeds; some factors are related to the field, including characteristics of daily work, patient problems, and an individual’s experience with nephrology and the people; and other factors are idiosyncratic. The reduced number of nephrology fel-lowship applicants, and particularly US-educated med-ical graduates, has recently been documented (1,2). In this issue ofCJASN, Shah et al. (3) report results, analyze trends, and recommend changes based on data from a survey about career choice selection and satisfaction among nephrology fellows. This analysis derives from responses of almost one-quarter of fellows, all of whom were surveyed in June 2011