Why other specialties, why not family medicine specialization?

Abstract

Aim: The uneven distribution of specialties among physicians is a worldwide problem. For a high quality primary healthcare system, the number of family physicians should be increased. This study was carried out in order to determine last year medical students’ career choices, the factors affecting their decision and to evaluate their views on family medicine specialization.

Material and Methods: A cross-sectional and descriptive study of 132 students from the sixth year of Gaziantep University Faculty of Medicine was completed between September 2018 and October 2018. A questionnaire was distributed to the participants asking their reasons for choosing medicine, their plans for specialization and affecting factors, and their opinions about family medicine specialization.

Results: After graduation, 10.6% of the students wanted to work as family physicians. The top three specialties for male students are ENT, internal medicine, ophthalmology, while female students end to prefer dermatology, internal medicine, and child and adolescent psychiatry. While only 7.5% of the students picked family physician specialization as one of their top three specialties, 21.2% of them had even planned their subspecialties. It was found that 56% of the students thought there was “very little difference” between working directly as a family physician right after medical school and after completing family physician specialization. 9% of the students indicated that they want to specialize in family medicine while 31% indicated that they will only continue if they cannot get in too their residencies. Family medicine expertise was evaluated by the students as “good” based on financial stabilization by 58.3%, good work-social/private life balance by 84.8%, a convenience in terms of no night shifts by 88.6%, being a valuable part of society by 48.4%, and a low risk and low liability by 67.4% of the students. It was found that the student’s family medicine specialization was “not good” in terms of prestige (46.2%), academic career choices (43.9%) and being interesting (non-monotonous) (56.8%).

Conclusion: It was found that students wanted to specialize in medicine and they even planned their subspecialties and had low interest in family medicine specialization. Family medicine specialization should be emphasized during basic medical education. As being the cornerstone of primary healthcare system, family medicine specialty should be more appealing by improving the negative conditions and mind sets that render it unattractive. Further research should be performed to increase the prestige by the society.