I just took part in the UNC School of Medicine’s Internal Medicine Interest Group session.   These type of panels were recently discussed in a New England Journal of Medicine Perspective, as well as that week’s #meded Twitter chat (you can read the transcript of that chat here).  Man was I in for a surprise!

With all of the talk about the lack of generalists in medicine and waning interest in Internal Medicine, I only expected about 20 or 30 students to show up.  Instead, I arrived to see about 150 or so students with a nearly-completely filled auditorium.

What should I attribute this to?

I found out later that it was the first of the “Career Opportunity Series” luncheons for the new first year medical students.  That might be a good reason.

I’d like to think that there was some other great reason for so many students showing up.  Maybe they all really want to go into IM (or at least think they do at this juncture). Maybe they heard that I was going to be on the panel (yeah, right!).

Maybe they are truly “undifferentiated” and are taking every opportunity they can to figure out the right career choice for them (the “idealist” viewpoint”)…

Or maybe it was just the free pizza.