Awareness about scope of anaesthesiology, attitudes towards the speciality and stress levels amongst postgraduate students in anaesthesiology: A cross-sectional study

Trends in selection of a career in medicine vary from country to country. To plan future recruitment strategies and to balance distribution of physicians among medical specialties, each country needs to examine these reasons as part of educational research. The aim of this study was to explore the Anaesthesiology postgraduate students’ knowledge about anaesthesia as a speciality, their attitude towards anaesthesia as a career choice, stress levels during the period of postgraduation, views regarding Diploma in Anaesthesiology and undergraduate exposure to the subject. Eight hundred pretested questionnaires were provided to the anaesthesia postgraduate students attending various national level conferences in India. The collected data were statistically analysed using SPSS version 20. Only 31.6% of the students were aware of scope of anaesthesiology and 42.3% of students joined the speciality out of the interest to learn the subject, whereas 55.7% joined for other reasons, including non-availability of other specialties during medical postgraduate counselling. About 70% of students were stressed out during postgraduation, 31.6% found difficulty in accommodating the demands of challenging job and 3.8% went into depression. Majority of anaesthesiology postgraduate students were unaware of the scope of Anaesthesiology at the time of medical postgraduate counselling; only two-fifth of the students joined the speciality out of interest to learn the subject and most of them felt stressed out during the period of postgraduation. Majority of the students were of the opinion that Diploma in Anaesthesia was not a viable career option and should be scrapped.