• Marta van Zanten, John R Boulet, Danette McKinley, and Gerald P Whelan.
• Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, 3624 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. mvanzanten@ecfmg.org
• Teach Learn Med. 2002 Jan 1;14(3):175-7.

BackgroundOne goal of program directors is to attract and retain high-quality residents. It is therefore important to study attrition of residents to determine specific cohorts that may be less likely to complete residency training.PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate attrition rates in targeted programs.MethodSurveys were sent to 540 program directors whose programs contained at least 25% international medical graduates. The program directors reported both voluntary attrition and termination rates.ResultsOverall attrition rates for international medical graduates and U.S. medical graduates were similar, although U.S. medical graduates were terminated at a slightly lower rate than international medical graduates (2.5% vs. 3.6%) and were somewhat more likely to transfer to other programs (9.9% and 8.9%).ConclusionsAttrition from these programs remains a small but persistent issue. In addition, the differences in termination and transfer rates for the 2 years of the study were greater than the differences in rates between U.S. and international medical graduates.

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