Seeking motivation for selecting Medical Profession as a Career Choice

Abstract

Objective: To determine the motivational factors of medical students for selecting medical career as a profession.
 Methods: This was a survey based cross-sectional study. Medical students of first and second year from private and public medical colleges of Rawalpindi and Islamabad were recruited via convenient sampling and a self-based questionnaire was distributed to them. Besides demographics, questions were based on factors influencing medical students to pursue medical career. Data was collected and descriptive analysis was done using SPSS 21.
 Results: A total of 300 medical students participated in the study; 129 (43%) of them were males and 171 (57%) were females with mean age of 19.35 years. Among Humanitarian based questions; Serving Humanity gained highest percentage, followed by sympathies for mankind and health for everyone sequentially. In Societal factors, Prestigious Profession and in Scientific factors based questions Challenging Field ranked first. Amongst all the questions Prestigious Profession takes the lead.
 Conclusion: Major motivation behind selecting medical field was prestigious profession followed by altruism. By understanding medical students’ motivational factors for pursuing medical field we would be able to analyze the future trend of professionals.
 doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.5.2799
 How to cite this:Hassan M, Shahzad F, Waqar SH. Seeking motivation for selecting Medical Profession as a Career Choice. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(5):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.5.2799
 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Choice of medicine program: A single-institution study

“…Majority of the study participants' response indicated that selection of medicine for their bachelor's degree in college was their own choice, followed by parental influence. This finding was similar to the study reported by Hassan et al (2020) where 64.6% joined the medical profession by their own will, 26% were influenced by their parents [ 6 ]. Different results were obtained in the study conducted by Zayabalaradjane et al (2018), where parental influence made up more than 40% of the participant responses [ 7 ].…”

“…Monetary reason was the other motive, also reported by Nath et al (2007) in which 13.8% of the students had chosen the medical profession for monetary reasons [ 9 ]. A study conducted in Egypt by Kabil et al (2018) also ranked prestige as the most highly considered motivational factor followed by financial security [ 6 , 13 ]. Twice as many females in comparison to males chose “to serve humanity” and almost half as many (13.3%) of the females chose “to earn more money”.…”

To be or not to be an Obstetrician/Gynaecologist

“…Overall medical professionals are compassionate, especially female doctors are more social and connected to their patients emotionally. 9 , 11 - 14 Empathy and altruism was obvious among our physicians as well. Almost every participant (16/18) considered Emotional Satisfaction as a major motivating factor.…”

“…This may be because Pakistan has strong clanship and decisions of children specially women are mostly influenced by family, along with care and encouragement. 2 , 11 ( Table-II , comment 07-11)…”

A comparison of Male and Female Medical Student's Motivation towards Career Choice

“…5 Harder the goal, more motivation is required to achieve it. 6 Existing literature suggests that several factors influence students' decision to study medicine. 7,8,9 These include factors on the improvement of one's social and financial status (such as money, fame, and status) or those related to their interest or professional responsibilities (such as interest in the subject, to serve people).…”