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. 2020 Apr 29;20:133. doi: 10.1186/s12909-020-02048-x

Table 2.

Unadjusted and adjusted proportional odds ratios of medical students wanting to ultimately care for an underserved or vulnerable population

Medical student characteristics Proportional odds ratios (ORs) of medical students wanting to ultimately care for an underserved or vulnerable population
Crude OR
(95% CI)
Adjusteda OR
(95% CI)
Adjustedb OR
(95% CI)
Premedical volunteerism composite variable^
 Lowest tertile (ref) (ref) (ref)
 Middle tertile 3.94 (1.59, 9.78) 2.72 (0.99, 7.36) 4.34 (1.32, 14.32)
 Highest tertile 5.92 (2.31, 15.13) 4.33 (1.51, 12.40) 5.68 (1.63, 19.81)
Being from a rural hometown* 1.91 (0.91, 4.00) 1.27 (0.44, 3.67)
Medical school academic percentile^
 Lowest tertile (ref) (ref)
 Middle tertile 1.29 (0.54, 3.06) 2.40 (0.80, 7.19)
 Highest tertile 0.33 (0.14, 0.79) 0.58 (0.18, 1.83)
Long-term career goals^
 Other specialty/ (ref) (ref)
 Subspecialise
  Undecided 2.45 (1.02, 5.82) 1.64 (0.59, 4.54)
  Primary care 4.39 (1.60, 12.05) 1.95 (0.57, 6.73)
Desire to locate practice in underserved area^
 No (ref)
 Maybe 12.49 (4.79, 43.75)
 Yes 47.40 (13.67, 164.3)

CI Confidence interval; ref. Reference; MCAT Medical College Admissions Test.

^Crude proportional odds ratio had a p-value less than 0.01.

*Crude proportional odds ratio had a p-value of 0.086

aModel adjusted for age, MCAT score, race/ethnicity, having a graduate degree, and undergraduate debt

b In addition to adjusting for the variables mentioned above, this model adjusted for long-term goals, hometown, and medical school percentile. Due to a high level of correlation between service interest and wanting to locate practice in an underserved area, the latter variable was not included in final adjusted models