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Medical students’ attitudes towards and views of general practice careers in Singapore: a cross-sectional survey and qualitative analysis

BACKGROUND: Like many other countries, Singapore needs to support its ageing population by attracting more doctors into general practice (GP) and family medicine (FM). To achieve this requires a better understanding of what attracts or deters medical students. We conducted a cross-sectional survey a...

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Autores principales: Fang, Yang, Soljak, Michael, Tan, Shawn Lien Ler, Smith, Helen E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8995911/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35410191
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03298-7
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author Fang, Yang
Soljak, Michael
Tan, Shawn Lien Ler
Smith, Helen E.
author_facet Fang, Yang
Soljak, Michael
Tan, Shawn Lien Ler
Smith, Helen E.
author_sort Fang, Yang
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Like many other countries, Singapore needs to support its ageing population by attracting more doctors into general practice (GP) and family medicine (FM). To achieve this requires a better understanding of what attracts or deters medical students. We conducted a cross-sectional survey among medical students in Singapore. METHODS: An online survey was distributed to students from all three medical schools to understand their likelihood of choosing primary care careers, what they valued in their careers, their attitude towards different aspects of general practice and family medicine relative to other medical fields, and the positive and negative perceptions of primary care held by themselves, their lecturers, and clinical mentors. They were able to elaborate the negativity encountered in the open-ended questions. Quantitative data was analyzed with descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, and linear regression; qualitative data was analyzed thematically. RESULTS: The survey was completed by 391 students. Slightly over half indicated a likelihood of choosing a career in primary care. For their own careers, the students valued job satisfaction and career development opportunities the most. They perceived careers in primary care as being most likely to offer reasonable hours and close patient relationships, but least likely to offer career advancement potential relative to other medical fields. Their likelihood of choosing primary care careers was significantly predicted by what they value in their own career and their attitudes toward GP/FM relative to other medical fields, but not by the perceptions of GP/FM by others. Free-text responses illustrated how students encounter derogatory comments about GP/FM: the work being “mundane and repetitive”, the careers non-competitive, and the doctors poor in clinical competence. CONCLUSION: While the shortage of primary care doctors is a global issue, our findings highlight the value of situating inquiries in localized contexts. Medical curriculum should emphasize the critical role of primary care in the healthcare system and primary care doctors should be given due recognition to build a strong and motivated primary care workforce to serve the future healthcare needs of the population.
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spelling pubmed-89959112022-04-11 Medical students’ attitudes towards and views of general practice careers in Singapore: a cross-sectional survey and qualitative analysis Fang, Yang Soljak, Michael Tan, Shawn Lien Ler Smith, Helen E. BMC Med Educ Research BACKGROUND: Like many other countries, Singapore needs to support its ageing population by attracting more doctors into general practice (GP) and family medicine (FM). To achieve this requires a better understanding of what attracts or deters medical students. We conducted a cross-sectional survey among medical students in Singapore. METHODS: An online survey was distributed to students from all three medical schools to understand their likelihood of choosing primary care careers, what they valued in their careers, their attitude towards different aspects of general practice and family medicine relative to other medical fields, and the positive and negative perceptions of primary care held by themselves, their lecturers, and clinical mentors. They were able to elaborate the negativity encountered in the open-ended questions. Quantitative data was analyzed with descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, and linear regression; qualitative data was analyzed thematically. RESULTS: The survey was completed by 391 students. Slightly over half indicated a likelihood of choosing a career in primary care. For their own careers, the students valued job satisfaction and career development opportunities the most. They perceived careers in primary care as being most likely to offer reasonable hours and close patient relationships, but least likely to offer career advancement potential relative to other medical fields. Their likelihood of choosing primary care careers was significantly predicted by what they value in their own career and their attitudes toward GP/FM relative to other medical fields, but not by the perceptions of GP/FM by others. Free-text responses illustrated how students encounter derogatory comments about GP/FM: the work being “mundane and repetitive”, the careers non-competitive, and the doctors poor in clinical competence. CONCLUSION: While the shortage of primary care doctors is a global issue, our findings highlight the value of situating inquiries in localized contexts. Medical curriculum should emphasize the critical role of primary care in the healthcare system and primary care doctors should be given due recognition to build a strong and motivated primary care workforce to serve the future healthcare needs of the population. BioMed Central 2022-04-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8995911/ /pubmed/35410191 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03298-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Fang, Yang
Soljak, Michael
Tan, Shawn Lien Ler
Smith, Helen E.
Medical students’ attitudes towards and views of general practice careers in Singapore: a cross-sectional survey and qualitative analysis
title Medical students’ attitudes towards and views of general practice careers in Singapore: a cross-sectional survey and qualitative analysis
title_full Medical students’ attitudes towards and views of general practice careers in Singapore: a cross-sectional survey and qualitative analysis
title_fullStr Medical students’ attitudes towards and views of general practice careers in Singapore: a cross-sectional survey and qualitative analysis
title_full_unstemmed Medical students’ attitudes towards and views of general practice careers in Singapore: a cross-sectional survey and qualitative analysis
title_short Medical students’ attitudes towards and views of general practice careers in Singapore: a cross-sectional survey and qualitative analysis
title_sort medical students’ attitudes towards and views of general practice careers in singapore: a cross-sectional survey and qualitative analysis
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8995911/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35410191
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03298-7
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