Medical students' attitude towards rheumatology training at foundation years' level in the UK and rationale behind the students' choice: results from a national survey

The aims are to assess whether medical students are interested in rheumatology as a training post during post-medical-school and prior to specialty training that is covered by foundation years (FY) training in the UK, to determine the time spent in the undergraduate training in rheumatology and whether the desire for musculoskeletal (MsK) medicine training (rheumatology and orthopaedics taken together) is enhanced during FY training and to analyse the rationale behind their choice for rheumatology alone or combined with orthopaedics. An online questionnaire was distributed to all 31 UK medical schools, addressed to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-year medical students. The questionnaire was completed by 256 students from 11 of 31 medical schools existed in the UK in 2009. Most respondents (n = 156; 60.9 %) received 3 weeks (96 h) exposure to rheumatology, whilst one-fifth (n = 53; 20.7 %) had received no exposure in rheumatology. A total of 122 students of the 256 that responded (47.6 %) would like to do rheumatology as part of their training and 116 (45.3 %) would like to have more posts available in rheumatology. However, when asked to choose 6 specialties, out of 21, which would be most useful for post-university training, rheumatology was amongst the bottom three, attracting only 9.4 % of respondent students. A total of 68 of 256 (26.5 %) students, however, expressed a desire for MsK medicine: 44/256 (17.1 %) for orthopaedics and 24/256 (9.4 %) for rheumatology. From a total of 49 of 256 (19.1 %) open-ended responses obtained, 25 (51 %) were from those medical students willing to have exposure in MsK medicine: 15 of 44 (34 %) willing to have orthopaedics and 10 of 24 (41.6 %) willing to have rheumatology. Analysis of the responses revealed that it is mostly the specialty choice that guides towards specialty training. One in five of the medical students responded to had received (actual or perceived) no exposure to rheumatology during their undergraduate years. Career choice that derived mostly from undergraduate exposure is the driving force behind medical students' choice for foundation year training.