The results of the Medical School Outcomes Database and Longitudinal Tracking (MSOD) project have been published, and show that between starting and finishing medical school, 75.7% of students will change their vocational preference.

The most popular preferred vocations for students entering medical school are surgery, paediatric and child health and general practice, and for those completing medical school are surgery, adult/internal medicine/physician and general practice. But, it’s likely to be different students with these preferences at the beginning and at the end of med school.

Based at the Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand office, the MSOD program has been running since 2005, with medical student participants from all Australian medical schools and two New Zealand medical schools. The participants were asked to complete a short questionnaire at different stages:

• Commencing Medical Students Questionnaire (CMSQ) upon entry to medical school
• Exit Questionaire (EQ) in the final year of medical school
• Post Graduate Year (PGY) survey, questionnaire that is being developed to be completed after completion of their medical studies, which consist of:

–    PGY1 on one year after completion
–    PGY3 on three years after completion
–    PGY5 on five years after completion
–    PGY8 on eight years after completion

The result of the CMSQ and EQ data evaluation are:

• 15,651 (70.7%) of the 22,126 commencing students selected a vocation as their first preference for future practice. The three highest preferred vocation ranking were Surgery (26.4%), Paediatric and Child Health (15.3%), and General Practice (13.3%).
• 7,531 (88.5%) of the 8,509 completing students selected a vocation as their first preference for future practice. The three highest preferred vocation ranking were Surgery (18.8%), Adult Medicine/Internal Medicine/Physician (18.0%), and General Practice (13.3%).
• Between CMSQ and EQ, 75.7% of medical students changed their vocational preference.

A previous study at four Scotland medical schools in 2013 also showed medical student career preferences. The study surveyed Year 1 students before they had much experience of medical school and Year 5 students after they had made decisions about their post-graduate foundation training.

The difference of the two groups of students is shown below:

• 1,332 (80.4%) of 1,657 Year 1 students chose a preferred career, the top three choices were Medicine (61.7%), General Practice (45.3%), and Surgey (36.3%).
• 1,325 (81.4%) of 1,628 Year 5 students chose a preferred career, the top three choices were Medicine (59.6%), General Practice (55.3%), and Emergency Medicine (41,1%).

Click here for the Australian study and here for the UK study.

Image: hin255 – freedigitalphotos.net