Future Choices of Specialty Among Final year MBBS Students: Perception Towards Anesthesiology.

Ramesh Ghimire; Pramila Poudel

Volume : VIII, Issue : IV, April - 2019

Future Choices of Specialty Among Final year MBBS Students: Perception Towards Anesthesiology.

Ramesh Ghimire, Pramila Poudel

Abstract :

Choosing a specialty for post–graduation is a very difficult task for undergraduate medical students. Despite its vital role in health care system Anesthesiology is not preferred by many of the students. A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted among final year MBBS students to identify the factors influencing choice of future specialty and their perception towards Anesthesiology at a private medical college at Parsa district Nepal using a pretested self–administered structured questionnaire. The obtained data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS 16 version. Total 107 students were studied. The mean age of students was 24.78�1.488 ranging from 22–28 years. Obstetrics and Gynecology (17.8%) followed by Internal Medicine (16.8%) and Radiology (14%) was the top rated specialty respectively. Anesthesiology was preferred by only (4.7%) of students whereas the specialty as basic science, community medicine and ENT was not preferred by any of those students. The choice of specialty was significantly associated with gender and presence of career counseling (p value 0.001) and (p value 0.043) respectively. Secure and having scope in the future (96.35%) was the most dominant factors to influence future specialty choices. Based on the mean perception score 5.823�1.779 almost 2/3rd (64.43%) students had unfavourable perception regarding anesthesiology. Medical educationist , curriculum designers , implementers especially anesthesiologist has to adopt necessary action to clarify the misperceptions thus promoting student�s positive perception and help student decide their choices of specialty that could benefit the students at personal level as well as the health care system of country