What do Turkish, Spanish, and Pakistani medical students value in specialty training positions? A discrete choice experiment

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to find out specialty training preferences of senior medical students from three medical schools in Turkey, Spain, and Pakistan. METHODS: A Discrete Choice Experiment was carried out using an electronic form for students in three countries in 2021–2022 term. Each choice set in the form consisted of two hypothetical specialty training positions. The attributes were location, earnings, working conditions, personal perspective, quality of education, probability of malpractice, and prestige. Conditional logit model was used to estimate participants’ preferences and “willingness to accept” values. RESULTS: The most valued attribute was “personal perspective on specialty area” for Turkish and Spanish students, while this attribute was not meaningful for Pakistani students. Turkish students needed a 204% of change in their income for a swap between the specialty that they like and not like. This tradeoff necessitated a 300% change for Spanish students. The most valued attribute for Pakistani students, which was “working conditions”, necessitated a 97% increase in income to switch from working in good conditions to working in poor conditions. CONCLUSION: In this first multinational DCE study in the medical education literature, we found the preferences of medical students in Turkey, Spain, and Pakistan are affected to various extents by several factors.