Career choice regret during COVID-19 among healthcare students and professionals in mainland China: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 epidemic affected the career choice of healthcare professionals and students. Career choice regret of healthcare professionals and students during COVID-19 outbreak and its affected factors are largely unexplored. METHODS: Convenience sample of nurses, doctors, and medical students were recruited from hospitals and universities nationwide. The data collected including demographic information, professional value before and after the COVID-19 outbreak, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and career choice regret level by an online questionnaire. Multinominal logistic regression was employed to explore the factors associated with career choice regret. RESULTS: In total, 9322 participants of convenience sampling were enrolled in, including 5786 nurses, 1664 doctors, and 1872 medical students. 6.7% participants had career choice regret. Multinominal logistic regression analysis showed, compared to participants with no regret, that as levels of psychological resilience increased, the odds of experiencing career choice regret decreased (OR = 0.95, 95% CI 0.94–0.96), while participants with lower professional value evaluation after the COVID-19 outbreak had higher probability to experience career choice regret (OR = 1.55,95% CI 1.50–1.61). Medical students were more likely to regret than nurses (OR = 1.65,95% CI 1.20–2.28), participants whose career/major choice was not their personal ideal had higher risk of experience career choice regret (OR = 1.59,95% CI 1.29–1.96), while participants who were very afraid of the coronavirus had higher risk to experience career choice regret then participants with no fear at all (OR = 2.00,95% CI 1.24–3.21). As for the medical students, results indicated that medical students major in nursing and undergraduates had higher risk to experience career choice regret compared to medical students major in clinical medicine and postgraduate (Master or PhD), with an odds ratios of 2.65(95% CI 1.56–4.49) and 6.85 (95% CI 2.48–18.91)respectively. CONCLUSIONS: A minority of healthcare professionals and medical students regretted their career choices during the COVID-19 outbreak. Enhance personal psychological resilience and professional value would helpful to reduce career choice regret among healthcare professionals and students during pandemic.