Why medical students choose not to carry out an intercalated BSc: a questionnaire study

BMC Medical Education

Research Article

John Lemon¹  Helen F Galley²  Jamie A Nicholson²  Jennifer Cleland³ 

[1] Directorate of Information Technology, Edward Wright Building, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3QY, Aberdeen, UK;Division of Applied Medicine, School of Medicine & Dentistry, University of Aberdeen, AB25 2ZD, Aberdeen, UK;Division of Medical & Dental Education, School of Medicine & Dentistry, University of Aberdeen, AB25 2ZD, Aberdeen, UK;

关键词: Medical Student;    Academic Medicine;    Academic Ranking;    Debt Level;    Transferable Skill;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6920-10-25

 received in 2009-10-21, accepted in 2010-03-23,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAt some medical schools, students can opt to undertake a 1 year intercalated degree, usually a BSc, in addition to their medical course. Over the last few years the numbers of students who have opted to undertake an intercalated degree have been steadily decreasing despite the advantages in securing foundation posts. The aim of this study was to find out why medical students opted not to take an intercalated degree.MethodsAll 4th and 5th year medical students (n = 343) who had elected not to take an intercalated degree were personally handed a questionnaire.Results293 completed questionnaires were returned (response rate 85%). The most common reason students opted not to intercalate was because they did not want to have another year of study (69.6%) or incur more debt (51.9%). Only 45 (15.3%) students said they had enough information to inform their decision: reported take up of information provision was poor.ConclusionsOur findings indicate that the benefits of intercalating need to be better defined and presented to students in a way that they can make a more informed decision.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Nicholson et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.