DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2016.v04i11.002

Pages: 3863-3867

What drives a student to prefer a particular specialty over other can also provide an insight into what may be required or needed to deal the existing situation about manpower availability in various specialties? This study was planned with an objective to study factors affecting medical students in formulating their career and specialty preferences. The present cross-sectional study was executed by the Department of Forensic Medicine of a tertiary care teaching institution. In this study, all the medical undergraduate students currently studying in the medical college were included. A self-administered semi-structured questionnaire served as study tool. Students were contacted at the end of theory and practical classes. The questionnaire consisted of 35 items and contained following sections: sociodemographic variables, choice of specialty, reasons for preference and apprehensions in their mind if any. Overall, the most preferred specialties were Orthopaedics (116), surgery (97) followed by internal medicine (77). The least preferred choices were anatomy, physiology (2 each), biochemistry (4), forensic medicine and microbiology (7 each). Three top factors that influenced the student’s decisions to opt for a particular specialty included High income potential (average Likert scale 4.6), Employment scope in the future (4.5), Focus on community service to serve the sick and society (3.9). No fear was expressed by 62 (32.6%) of the students, whereas, 68 (35.8%) feared ragging. Fifty students (26.3%) were apprehensive about the long period of study course. Some specialties such as anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, forensic medicine and microbiology are not favoured and there is a need to improve student’s interest in these areas. There is a need to provide some sort of an orientation and counselling at the time of entry into medical college.