Manpower pools for three health professions in Israel

Characteristics of the pool of candidates set limits on the nature of the manpower entering a given profession. Pools of candidates for three health professions-medicine, dentistry and pharmacy-are self-selected from different strata of the Israeli population and are found to differ in terms of prior academic achievement, sex, socio-economic origins, extent of inter-generational continuity and commitment to the field chosen. There is a lack of differentiation between candidates for medicine and dentistry in the skills, motives and personality traits thought by the candidates to be necessary for a "competent" professional. Both groups give most emphasis to interpersonal skills, second in importance are intellectual and science oriented traits while organizational-administrative traits are least emphasized. Candidates for pharmacy emphasize the cognitive-scientific component and organizational-administrative skills more than the other two groups. Pharmacy candidates show a lower level of self-confidence than the other groups and a poorer approximation to their own definition of a "competent" professional.