Career Choices Among Medical Students and Factors Influencing Their Choices

BACKGROUND: Physicians’ specialty choices have a direct impact on medical workforce. As medical students progress through medical school, it is observed that their interests in specialties change due to one reason or another. The aim of this study is to firstly identify factors that influence medical students’ career choices using a cross sectional study. Secondly, to analyze which factors are the most influential with the aim of informing the work force and curriculum developers and thus enhance the employability of graduates. METHODS: A computer generated random sample of 131 medical students was taken from the preclinical second-year medical students at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland-Medical University of Bahrain. Questionnaires were distributed face to face and later retrieved for data collection and analysis. RESULTS: Eighty-four (70%) students responded to the survey. Thirty-two (38.1%) of the respondents were male and fifty-two (61.9%) were female. The top three preferred specialty choices were Surgery 22 (26.5%) followed by Internal medicine 12 (14.5%) and Paediatrics 11 (13.3%). The most popular factor in specialty choice was interesting field and the least popular factor was geographical location of the hospital or health instituation. CONCLUSION: The top three career choices were selected because those students felt they were interesting fields. The least important factors were geographical location of the hospitals or health instituations, media influence and financial reasons respectively.