A surgical career for New Zealand junior doctors? Factors influencing this choice.

Jason Du · Janarthanan Sathanathan · Gill Naden · Stephen Child

23 citations0/0 files storedPubMed

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Diversity and Career in Medicine Innovations in Medical Education Health and Medical Research Impacts

Abstract

AIMS: To discover the level of interest in a surgical career amongst junior doctors and trainee interns in the Auckland region. Secondary aims are to identify the factors that influence career choice as well as the timing of career choice. METHODS: An anonymous and structured questionnaire was distributed to all trainee interns and junior doctors in their first to fifth postgraduate years in the Auckland region. Questions were based on basic demographics, level of training, career preference and factors from previous experiences in surgery that may have influenced their career choice. RESULTS: Total of 87 replies with 36% expressed interest in surgery whereas 64% were interested in non-surgical specialties. Top three factors influencing career choice were similar in both groups: Lifestyle, career ambitions and family. Personal interest, practical hands-on and positive previous experiences were the top reasons why junior doctors chose surgery. Poor lifestyle, lacking of interest, limited future part-time work and previous negative experiences were the top reasons why junior doctors did not choose surgery. A significantly (p<0.05) larger number of junior doctors in the surgical group had positive previous experiences on their surgical runs, with their consultants and registrars compared with the non-surgical group. Those interested in surgery decided on their careers earlier. CONCLUSION: Career aspirations of New Zealand junior doctors were similar to findings reported overseas. To promote surgery amongst junior doctors and medical students, attention should be paid to the key factors which may influence career choice. By improving working conditions and have better surgical education with good mentoring, team atmosphere and opportunities for early exposure will hopefully allow better recruitment and training of future surgeons.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 23 citations exist upstream.

References

2003Trends in Career Choice by US Medical School Graduates 2003Are there gender differences in choosing a surgical career?2003Decline in Popularity of General Surgery as a Career Choice in North America: Review of Postgraduate Residency Training Selection in Canada, 1996–2001 2002The modern medical school graduate and general surgical training: are they compatible?2006Career choices of New Zealand junior doctors.2003How to promote medical student interest in surgery

Cited by

2014Exploring Factors That Have Caused a Decrease in Surgical Manpower in Taiwan 2015Less Than Full-time Training in surgical specialities: Consensus recommendations for flexible training by the Association of Surgeons in Training

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.