Working in preventive medicine or not? Flawed perceptions decrease chance of retaining students for the profession

Human Resources for Health

Karen D. Könings¹  Albert J. J. A. Scherpbier¹  Jeroen J. G. van Merriënboer¹  Hoat Ngoc Luu²  Van Anh Thi Nguyen³  E. Pamela Wright⁴ 

[1] 0000 0001 0481 6099, grid.5012.6, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, School of Health Professions Education (SHE), Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200, Maastricht, MD, the Netherlands;0000 0004 0642 8489, grid.56046.31, Biostatistics and Medical Informatics Department, Institute for Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Hanoi Medical University, 1 Ton That Tung street, Dongda, Hanoi, Vietnam;0000 0004 0642 8489, grid.56046.31, Department of Medical Education and Skills Laboratory, Hanoi Medical University, 1 Ton That Tung street, Dongda, Hanoi, Vietnam;Guelph International Health Consulting, Frederik Hendrikstraat 18, 1052, Amsterdam, HT, the Netherlands;

关键词: Student perception;    Characteristics of specialty;    Preventive medicine;    First-choice students;    Student motivation;    Career choice;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12960-019-0368-2

来源: publisher

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundRecruiting and retaining students in preventive medical (PM) specialties has never been easy; one main challenge is how to select appropriate students with proper motivation. Understanding how students perceive PM practice differently from practicing doctors is necessary to guide students, especially for those for whom PM is only a substitute for medicine as their first study preference, properly during their study and, later, the practice of PM.MethodsOne thousand three hundred eighty-six PM students in four Vietnamese medical schools and 101 PM doctors filled out a questionnaire about the relevance of 44 characteristics of working in PM. ANOVAs were conducted to define the relationship between students’ interest, year of study, willingness to work in PM, and the degree to which students had realistic perceptions of PM practice, compared to doctors’ perceptions.ResultsOverall, compared to doctors’ perceptions, students overestimated the importance of most of the investigated PM practice’s characteristics. Moreover, students’ perception related to their preference and willing to pursue a career in PM after graduation. In particular, students for whom PM was their first choice had more realistic perceptions of community practice than those who chose PM as their second choice. And, second-choice students had more realistic perceptions than first-choice students in their final years of study, but expected higher work stress in PM practice. Students who were willing to pursue a career in PM rated the importance of community practice higher than those who were not. We also found that students’ perception changed during training as senior students had more realistic perceptions of clinical aspects and working stress than junior students, even though they overemphasized the importance of the community aspects of PM practice.ConclusionsTo increase the number of students actually entering the PM field after graduation, the flawed perceptions of students about the real working environment of PM doctors should be addressed through vocation-oriented activities in the curriculum targeted on groups of students who are most likely to have unrealistic perceptions. Our findings also have implications for other less attractive primary health care specialties that experience problems with recruiting and retaining students.

【 授权许可】

CC BY