Abstract
In pursuing optimal health care, an adequate medical workforce is crucial. However, many countries are struggling with a misalignment of students' specialty preferences and societal needs regarding the future medical workforce. In order to bridge this gap, it is relevant to gain a better understanding of the medical career choice processes. We explored career orientations among medical students in the Netherlands and their implications for future career choices. We used Q-methodology, a hybrid qualitative-quantitative method, to explore career orientations of medical students. Medical students from two universities in the Netherlands, varying in year of progression of medical school, ranked 62 statements with regard to importance for their future career choice. Participants explained their ranking in an interview and completed a questionnaire regarding demographics. Using by-person factor analysis we identified groups of individuals with similar orientations. Twenty-four students participated in this study, resulting in three distinct orientations towards future careers: a first career orientation that highly values lifelong self-development; a second that values work-life balance, and a third that was more concerned with achievement and recognition of their work. Medical students' career orientations differed in the importance of challenge, work-life balance, and need for recognition. This knowledge can help to design interventions to shift career choices of medical students closer towards future needs in society. Offering career coaching to students that challenges them to explore and prioritise their values, needs and motivations, for example using the materials form this study as a tool, and stimulates them to consider specialties accordingly, could be a promising strategy for guiding students to more long-term satisfying careers.
Highlights
In pursuing optimal health care, an adequate medical workforce is crucial
We explored career orientations among medical students in the Netherlands and their implications for future career choices
Twenty-four students participated in this study, resulting in three distinct orientations towards future careers: a first career orientation that highly values lifelong self-development; a second that values work-life balance, and a third that was more concerned with achievement and recognition of their work
Summary
As society is rapidly changing, health care demands are changing as well. Matching the supply of health professionals to societal demands is essential in aspiring to maintain an affordable healthcare system, which is sustainable and fit for purpose [1]. Cleland and colleagues have preceded us in taking this perspective and argued that instead of looking at individual aspects one could focus on push and pull factors [14, 15], the principal aspects that either drive people away from a certain alternative or draw people towards it Their studies, in which they used discrete choice experiments, probably come closest to investigating how medical graduates in the UK value and trade-off different aspects in their career decision-making. Using Q-methodology [23], this study explores patterns in the importance medical students attach to a broad set of values, needs, and motives for specialty choice, and uses quantitative and qualitative data to describe these patterns as distinct career orientations. The study elaborates on their implications for medical specialty choices and potential solutions for the mismatch between the aspirations of medical students and societal needs for medical professionals
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