6th year medical students’ future specialty preferences: A cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Studying career preferences can help in designing and improving health service systems. Determining the preferred specialty and understanding the compulsion affecting specialty choice will provide clues to influence such choice in the future to shift the balance of specialties among practitioners. The current study aimed to determine medical students' preferable specialty choices and the factors influencing their choices and their attitude towards postgraduate medical education in Jordan and abroad. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The descriptive cross-sectional study design included 6th-year medical students in medical faculties in Jordan. An online questionnaire was created on Google Forms and posted on platforms accessible by medical students at level six. Numbers and percentages were presented for all variables. Frequency distributions were also presented. Chi-square distribution was used to measure the association between categorical data. Alpha level of 0.05 was used. RESULTS: Most students 188 (74.3%) preferred to continue their post-graduate training abroad, while only 65 (25.7%) favored Jordan. 150 (59.3%) of the respondents are interested in the medical – non-surgical - specialties. The most important factor that encouraged the students to choose a specialty was Job opportunity (32.5%) followed by the number of years required to complete the training and the expected income (27.7%) each. CONCLUSION: Supportive steps should be undertaken to motivate medical graduates toward the needed specialties. Moreover, local Specialty training programs need to be –reevaluated to ensure proper post graduate medical learning.