Table 6.

Themes Related to What Women Knew about Careers in Academic Medicine During Their Training (Medical School and Residency), Gleaned from Interviews with 53 Women Academic Physicians, 2010

Theme	Associated Quotations
People/other people’s influence	- [W]hen I was a kid, my father was a chair of a department....we had people at our house all the time…somebody visiting from some foreign country…some visiting professor from somewhere....that’s what I thought academic medicine was…this very intellectual… exciting sort of …lifestyle… where you were always working on new things and exciting ideas…when I got to medical school I realized that not everybody was my family.
	- [W]e have faculty [who] are very, very, close to the student body… so it was that give-and-take relationship that really made academia such a great career choice.
	- I had several academic general pediatricians who were role models, so I got a bit of a glance of how they were able to combine their family life with their work life, too.
Variety	- As a resident, I think I started to get an understanding at that point…because I worked with people who were in academic medicine…I understood there were some people who devoted most of their time to research and some people [who] devoted most of their time to clincial practice.
	- I knew then that [for] practice in an academic center … there was some component of teaching in combination with clinical work…to some extent some people did more reseach than others…But I knew of the combination, and I think that was also when it appealed to me to do different parts of [my] job on different days.
	- I guess as a student and a resident what I saw was an intellectually challenging environment that had a lot going on and everyday was not the same.
Salary is a non-issue	- I knew that people in academic medicine made less money than people in private practice, but that was not really a consideration for me.
	- As a resident. … [academic medicine physicians] seem[ed] to have, from what I could see, … they had a pretty comfortable lifestyle; I was not struck that anybody was wealthy. I think I became aware during residency of the pay differences…I was aware that [academic medicine physicians] were paid less....But I also had a sense that they had more flexibility as a trade off for that… I also became more aware of the benefits of being in academics.
Academic health center environment	- I knew that in academics…well your focus is always on learning more and teaching up-to-date [material] and research…and where in private practice…your focus is on seeing as many patients as possible…so it’s a totally different focus.
	- [Academic medicine] seemed very rigorous and it seemed very research based, and it was a little scary…[laughter]…I am not going to lie.... these really smart people running around doing these really wonderful things completely changing the way we practice medicine…it was really intimidating.
Exposure	- Well, I think what I mostly knew was what we saw....outstanding clincians who are also really good teachers…as a student that was most of what I appreciated about academic medicine is that these people get to teach and they get to …provide clinical care …then in my residency and certainly my fellowship…more of the physician scientist model came into view because that was more of what I saw.
	- As a student, I would say my appreciation for academic medicine was limited; as a resident, I was able to work closely with faculty members who were involved in academics and who were productive; and so I was able to see them in the clincial aspect, the teaching aspect and also the research aspect.
	- They seemed happy; they all seemed to enjoy what they did....Most of them at the time to me were effective teachers; at the time most important to me was they seemed to enjoy what they did.
	- I really didn’t understand academics versus private practice…I would say that as a resident you start to become more familiar with the academic process…how it works…and I had the impression that the physician could impact the practice of medicine more if they had their hand in teaching, in research, and sort of always being around where things were happening…and I’d say that residency served to confirm all of those impressions.
	- When I was a resident, I realized a lot of my attendings were staying on because they liked the patients they were providing care for; they liked their job; it wasn’t just about the teaching—that was just an aspect of the job; but it was really the clinical time they spent; the support they had there; the level of care they had here and just the all around experience. It was such a fuller picture of what an academic [specialist] really does; it wasn’t just their staying on just to teach; it was a lot more than that; they really had a passion for serving their community; liked their patient population.