Mapping medical careers: questionnaire assessment of career preferences in medical school applicants and final-year students.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The medical specialities chosen by doctors for their careers play an important part in the workforce planning of health-care services. However, there is little theoretical understanding of how different medical specialities are perceived or how choices are made, despite there being much work in general on this topic in occupational psychology, which is influenced by Holland's RIASEC (Realistic-Investigative-Artistic-Social-Enterprising-Conventional) typology of careers, and Gottfredson's model of circumscription and compromise. In this study, we use three large-scale cohorts of medical students to produce maps of medical careers.

Methods

Information on between 24 and 28 specialities was collected in three UK cohorts of medical students (1981, 1986 and 1991 entry),

SUBMITTER: Petrides KV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC524180 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature