THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD ROCK'S SUMMER MEDICAL EDUCATION ENRICHMENT PROGRAM FOR MINORITIES

This study investigates the effects of a summer health professions enrichment program at the University of Hard Rock's Medical School designed to increase minority student enrollment in medical school and to help those students adapt to the medical environment.;This study is significant because this investigation will provide an understanding of the social context of a summer health professions program and how it effects students who did or did not participate in it in terms of background, process and outcome characteristics of students who received a medical education.;The subjects in this study will be groups of minority and majority students who had been admitted to the University of Hard Rock Medical School from 1972 through 1977. A subgroup of the minority students were also participants in the health professions program. Thus, data will be analyzed for three groups of medical students: (1) minority students who participated in the health professions summer program; (2) minority students who did not participate in the health professions summer program; and, (3) majority (white) students who did not participate in the health professions summer program. This three way division will be utilized in all of the analyses and comparisons that will be conducted.;The review of literature includes several converging lines of research relevant to the problem of underrepresented minority students and achievement in medical education. It also summarizes previous studies on investigations into the effects of an environment upon the individual and vice versa, career-selection research and research on the effects of a "critical mass" of minority students.;The problem under investigation in this study is threefold: (1) to analyze and describe in considerable detail the nature of this formal and informal learning environment and the participant response to this summer health professions program designed for minority undergraduate students; (2) to perform an analysis of the potential outcome of the program by examining the academic progression of former program participants who were admitted to this medical school; and (3) to determine if students admitted to this medical school who did not participate in the summer program progressed at rates similar to or different from the summer program participants.;Three primary methods for collecting information for this investigation were used: (1) participant observations (2) personal interviews; and, (3) review of administrative records of students. The plan of anlysis will be descriptive as well as comparative. The statistical tests used will depend on the type of data involved in the comparisons.;These data suggest that the summer program is effective in assisting minority students to overcome some of their background differences and to enhance their academic performance in terms of their completion of medical school. Still, the majority medical students had the lowest attrition rate of any racial category. The MHCP minority medical students demonstrated more staying power than did the minority students who did not particpate in the summer program. Finally, in terms of placement of post-graduate training, the minority medical graduates, as a group, selected a higher proportion of primary care specialties than did the majority students. The MHCP minority medical students had the highest proportion of all graduates selecting these specialties than did any other group.