The specialty choice of medical students in China: a stated preference experiment

BACKGROUND: Primary Care Providers (PCPs), such as internists and general practitioners, have been deemed a way of delivering cost-effective care in an equitable way because PCPs are responsible for providing accessible basic medical care for the general population. This study aims to examine medical students’ preferences for PCP-based specialty choices in the context of an ageing population in China. METHODS: We implemented a Best-Worst Scaling (BWS) experiment, a recently developed preference elicitation method based on random utility theory. Three hundred and fifty graduating medical students from three medical colleges were randomly recruited to evaluate 11 common medical specialties in China. A counting approach, a conditional logit model, and K-means clustering have been used to analyse the relative importance of items and preference heterogeneity among medical students. RESULTS: One hundred and ninety of 350 students completed valid questionnaires. General surgery was identified as the most preferred specialty among the overall sample, yet internal medicine shares the same importance as surgery. Both geriatric medicine and psychiatric medicine were found to be the least selected specialties. Finally, the K-means clustering further suggested there was preference heterogeneity across our sample. CONCLUSIONS: Two aims were fulfilled in this study. First, through our experimental approach the results provide a better understanding of the career desires of medical students in China. Second, the results of this study indicate that despite the fact a non-PCP-based specialty is the most popular among the sampled students; a PCP-based specialty is still an important alternative choice.