Family medicine as a career option - How students' attitudes changed during medical school

OBJECTIVE To track and describe career choice decisions of medical students as they progressed through their undergraduate training. DESIGN Quantitative survey of each class at 5 points during their undergraduate experience. Each survey collected qualitative descriptors of students' current career choices. SETTING Faculty of Medicine at memorial University of Newfoundland in St John's. PARTICIPANTS Undergraduate medical students in each year from 1999 to 2006. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Number of students considering family medicine as a career option at 5 different data-collection points throughout the medical school curriculum. RESULTS Many students considered family medicine as a career choice early in their undergraduate experience. The number of students considering family medicine dropped significantly during the second year of the curriculum. This trend was consistent across all students surveyed. Although interest in family medicine as a career rebounded later in the curriculum, it never fully recovered. CONCLUSION A large percentage of medical students considered family medicine as a career choice when they entered medical school. The percentage dropped significantly by the end of the second year of training. Attention should be directed toward understanding how the undergraduate medical curriculum in the first 2 years can protect and cultivate interest in family medicine as a career choice.