ArticleJournal of graduate medical education2026
A Qualitative Analysis of Underexplored Barriers to Physicians Seeking Mental Health Care in Medical License Applications.
Article in Journal of graduate medical education, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Despite increasing mental health diagnoses among physician trainees, fewer than one-third seek help due to stigma and fears of professional consequences. While national organizations have successfully advocated for licensing application reforms, trainees continue to cite licensure as a primary barrier, suggesting that additional deterrents may persist within application structure and content. Objective: To identify and quantify potential barriers to seeking mental health care within initial medical licensing applications beyond current recommendations regarding impairment-based questions and supportive language. Methods: This exploratory qualitative study analyzed initial allopathic medical license applications from all 50 US states and Washington, DC at 2 time points: in 2021 and between 2024 and 2025. Using inductive content analysis, authors identified emergent themes representing potential barriers and applied a coding scheme to quantify changes over time. Results: Five potential barriers were identified: application inaccessibility, unclear health question wording, scrutiny of training gaps, stigmatizing question grouping (mental health questions co-located with illegal/immoral activities), and uncertain privacy protections. From 2021 to 2025, improvements occurred in 4 domains: unclear language (11 to 6 states), training gap scrutiny (35 to 29 states), stigmatizing grouping (27 to 20 states), and privacy concerns (38 to 28 states). However, application accessibility worsened substantially (29 to 18 publicly accessible applications). Conclusions: Five distinct potential barriers persist in state medical licensing applications. Longitudinal analysis from 2021 to 2025 showed improvements in 4 domains, though application accessibility worsened substantially.
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