A physician retraining program. Assessment update.

The Medical College of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, has sponsored a retraining program for clinically inactive physicians since 1968. A previous study examined return to clinical medicine of retrainees from 1968 to 1975. The present study tracked changes in physician characteristics from 1976 to 1981 and compared return to clinical medicine of retrainees in the two time periods. Although important shifts in gender, nature of inactivity, status of licensure, and geographic distribution occurred during the past five years, the number of retrainees returning to clinical activity after the program was comparable for the two time periods (85% and 83%). Women inactive because of family responsibilities and non-clinically active physicians made more career changes than non-primary care clinical specialists. This study demonstrated that a retraining program is an effective method for reintroducing inactive physicians to clinical medicine.