creators_name: Gour, N creators_name: Srivastava, D creators_name: Adhikari, P creators_name: Shahi, A creators_name: Sharma, MK creators_name: Mahajan, PC creators_id: drneeraj_g04@yahoo.com editors_name: Kakkilaya, Srinivas editors_id: BS Kakkilaya type: journale datestamp: 2012-11-09 17:37:20 lastmod: 2012-11-09 17:37:20 metadata_visibility: show title: Specialty Preference Among Medical Students and Factors Affecting It ispublished: pub subjects: OJHAS full_text_status: public keywords: Medical students; Specialty preference abstract: Introduction: Medical education is one of the core part of educational system of any country. Medical education requires undergraduate students to study a wide range of medical specialties. It is often assumed that students do not make their career preferences until after they have graduated from medical school. So the reasons and factors responsible for preferences need to be found out among medical students. Material and Methods: It was a Cross sectional study on 180 medical students to assess preference for specialty and factors responsible. Results: Out of total 190 medical students more or less everyone (97.89%) wanted to pursue specialization and majority of them (96.84%) wanted to pursue the same in Medical Field(p>0.05). majority of male students were interested to pursue their specialization in the field of medicine (37.63%), surgery (23.65%) and pediatrics (13.97%). On the other hand female students were more interested in medicine (24.17%), pediatrics (32.96%) and obstetrics & gynecology (24.17%)(p<0.05). Interest, by far was found to be most common factor (76.63%) responsible for the preference of particular medical specialty among all four groups of students (1st professional-25.27%, 2nd professional-75.92%, final professional-89.47%, interns-68.42%).Conclusion: It is thus concluded there are many factors playing role in the specialty selection and preference among the medical students and should be equally justified and addressed. date: 2011-07-30 date_type: published publication: Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences volume: 10 number: 2 publisher: BS Kakkilaya refereed: TRUE referencetext: 1. Wright B, Scott I, Woloschuk W, Brenneis F, Bradley J. Career choice of new medical students at three Canadian universities: family medicine versus specialty medicine. CMAJ 2004;170:1920-1924. 2. McManus IC, Lefford F, Furnham AF, Shahidi S, Pincus T. Career preference and personality differences in medical school applicants. Psychology, Health and Medicine 1996;1:235-248. 3. 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Ananthakrishnan N. Acute shortage of teachers in medical colleges: Existing problems and possible solutions. NMJI 2007;20(1):25. citation: Gour, N and Srivastava, D and Adhikari, P and Shahi, A and Sharma, MK and Mahajan, PC (2011) Specialty Preference Among Medical Students and Factors Affecting It. [Journal (On-line/Unpaginated)] document_url: http://cogprints.org/7969/1/2011-2-12.pdf