Attitudes toward ophthalmology as a prospective career among pre-clinical medical students in China

BACKGROUND: A questionnaire was developed and administered to 450 medical students at the Xiangya Medical College, Central South University in Changsha, China to understand the attitudes among medical students in China toward different medical specialties and to find the factors that influenced their choice of career in ophthalmology. PARTICIPANTS: Fourth-year medical students in the five-year program and sixth-year medical students in the eight-year program. METHODS: All the students were asked to rate the importance of nine possible factors in choosing a specialty as their vocation and their first ranked future specialty career choice. RESULTS: When asked about the reasons for choosing to go to medical school, the top four reasons are the ability to help patients, interesting and challenging work, prestige, and job stability. When asked about the reasons for choosing a specialty, the top four reasons are the ability to find employment, financial reward, career upward mobility, and professional pressure. About the first career choice of the future specialty, for clinical medicine students, ophthalmology is the fifth ranked choice for clinical medicine students. 5.6% (five-year) and 3.4% (eight-year) of them choose ophthalmology as their top ranked specialty for their career. For anesthesia medicine and oral medicine students, most of them preferred to choose the same specialty as before. 1.5% (anesthesia) and 4.5% (oral) of them chose ophthalmology as their top ranked specialty. CONCLUSIONS: Medical students in China have numerous factors that motivate their choice in a specialty. Ophthalmology is the fifth ranked choice among clinical medicine students.