Fifty Years of Findings from the Jefferson Longitudinal Study of Medical Education

This book assembles research findings accumulated over the span of half a century from the Jefferson Longitudinal Study (JLS). This study, initiated in 1970, is the most comprehensive, extensive, and uninterrupted longitudinal study of medical students and graduates maintained in a single medical school. The study was based on the conviction that medical schools have a social responsibility and ethical obligation to monitor the quality of their educational programs, to assess their educational outcomes, and to ensure that their educational goals have been achieved for the purposes of public safety. The JLS has resulted in a large number of publications in professional peer-reviewed journals and presentations in national and international meetings. Some medical schools have expressed interest in learning more about the JLS, requesting copies of the instruments we used in the study, information about how to set up a longitudinal study of medical education, and other needed resources. In response to a request from Academic Medicine [2011, 86(3), p. 404], we prepared and published in that journal a schematic snapshot of the JLS for those interested in a model for the development of a longitudinal study of medical students and graduates. 

The JLS is well-known to the medical education research communities. A recent Google search using keywords “Jefferson Longitudinal Study” resulted in 1,550,000 hits, an indication of its broad popularity among researchers. At the present time, the JLS database contains academic information, assessments, and educational and career outcomes for 13,343 medical students and graduates of Sidney Kimmel (formerly Jefferson) Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. There are presently 502 variables in the JLS analytic database. This book presents a collection of 207 abstracts of major publications from peerreviewed journals, books, and book chapters in which data and information from the JLS were used.In this book, we classified the abstracts, based on their primary contents, into the following categories:

• Admissions of the Applicants to Medical School (e.g., standardized tests, academic preparation, other admission variables). 
• Demographic Composition (e.g., gender, age, race/ethnicity). 
• Performance Evaluations in Medical School (e.g., preclinical and clinical phases). 
• Postgraduate and Career (e.g., assessment of clinical competence in residency training, career choice, specialization, professional activities). 
• Psychosocial Attributes (e.g., personal qualities, indicators of physical and mental well-being). 
• Professionalism (e.g., assessment of elements of professionalism in medicine, such as clinical empathy, attitudes toward interprofesssional collaboration, and orientation.

Clara A. Callahan received her B.A. degree in anthropology from Wayne State University. She attended the Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she did two years of her pediatric residencybefore moving to Jefferson to complete her last year of residency training. Dr. Callahan was appointed to the Pediatrics faculty in 1982 and joined the Dean’s Staff of the Medical College in 1987. After initially working in Student Affairs, she became the Dean for Admissions in 1999. Given Dr. Callahan’s long time involvement with medical students, it is not surprising that much of her research centers on the performance on students in medical school and beyond.

Jon Veloski’s career began in 1970 at Thomas Jefferson University in information technology, and he moved to the medical college in 1973 to develop the database of the Jefferson Longitudinal Study. During the past 50 years he published over 150 scientific research papers in peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Academic Medicine, and other U.S and international journals. While the majority were based on data in the Jefferson Longitudinal Study reported herein, many used new data sets constructed with funding from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education, The American Board of Family Medicine, and the American Board of Internal Medicine. He completed his B.S. at Drexel University, and his M.S. and doctoral coursework in measurement, evaluation and research at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jennifer DeSantis received her M.Ed. from Stanford University and her B.A. from Vassar College. Her work focuses on empathy in medical education and health care both at Jefferson University, as well as nationally and internationally in collaboration with other institutions. Her background is in educational research and psychological sciences. 

Mohammadreza Hojat received his B.A. degree in educational psychology from Pahlavi University(currently University of Shiraz), his M.A. degree in psychology from the University of Tehran, and his Ph.D. in psychological services from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Hojat is a licensed psychologist, and has published more than 270 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 13 book chapters on educational, psychological, and social issues. Dr. Hojat has developed 10 psychometrically sound instruments (including the well-known Jefferson Scale of Empathy) for the assessment of health professions education and patient outcomes. Dr. Hojat’s research on measurement, development, erosion, enhancement, and correlates of empathy in health professions education and patient care has received broad media coverage, featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, the National Public Radio and television program segments. Dr. Hojat has served as a co-editor of two books: Loneliness:Theory, Research, and Applications (Sage Publications, 1987), and Assessment Measures in Medical School, Residency, and Practice: The Connections (Springer, 1993). The second edition of his seminal book “Empathy in Health Professions Education and Patient Care” was published in 2016 (Springer International Publishing).