Unto the third generation: evidence for...

Background: Medical students present higher numbers of physician relatives than expectable from the total populationprevalence of physicians. Evidence for such a familial aggregation effect of physicians has emerged in investigations fromthe Anglo-American, Scandinavian, and German-speaking areas. In particular, past data from Austria suggest afamilial aggregation of the medical, as well as of the psychological and psychotherapeutic, professions amongmedical and psychology undergraduates alike. Here, we extend prior related studies by examining (1) the extentto which familial aggregation effects apply to the whole nation-wide student census of all relevant (eight) publicuniversities in Austria; (2) whether effects are comparable for medical and psychology students; (3) and whetherthese effects generalize to relatives of three interrelated health professions (medicine, psychology, and psychotherapy).

Methods: We investigated the familial aggregation of physicians, psychologists, and psychotherapists, based on anentire cohort census of first-year medical and psychology students (n = 881 and 920) in Austria with generalized linearmixed models.

Results: For both disciplines, we found strong familial aggregation of physicians, psychologists, and psychotherapists.As compared with previous results, directionally opposite time trends within disciplines emerged: familial aggregationof physicians among medical students has decreased, whilst familial aggregation of psychologists among psychologystudents has increased. Further, there were sex-of-relative effects (i.e., more male than female physician relatives), butno substantial sex-of-student effects (i.e., male and female students overall reported similar numbers of relatives for allthree professions of interest). In addition, there were age-benefit effects, i.e., students with a relative in the medical orthe psychotherapeutic profession were younger than students without, thus suggesting earlier career decisions.

Conclusions: The familial aggregation of physicians, psychologists, and psychotherapists is high among medical andpsychology undergraduates in Austria. Discussed are implications of these findings (e.g., gender equity, feminization ofthe medical field, ideas for curricular implementation and student counselling), study limitations, and avenues for futureresearch.