ENT- a Dwindling Specialty Choice among the Medical Student at Undergraduate Level in a Developing Country

Abstract

Objectives: Document the frequency of ENT specialty choice being taken by third and fourth year Medical students. Introduction: The field of ENT specialty is a very competitive field all over the world. The field of ENT gives a more controllable life style as compared to General Surgery. Despite otolaryngology being an important specialty and being more flexible, with a controllable life style; the importance given to it is decreasing all over the world in undergraduate teaching. In UK the time given to ENT teaching is 3.4 days of pre-clinical teaching plus 5.0 days of ENT departmental experience. This is a very low exposure which in turn leads to low confidence in these graduates for ENT related history taking and then treating the patients. In Pakistan after the introduction of ENT exit examination being conducted in the fourth year instead of the final year; there has been a definite decrease in ENT being picked up as the final specialty choice of graduating students. Materials & Methods: This is a cross sectional survey study. Answers were marked on a likert scale of 5; as strongly agree, agree, not sure, disagree, strongly disagree. Results: Total of 167 students participated in the survey. Ninety eight students in the third year and Sixty nine students in the fourth year. For the question regarding taking up ENT as a career choice 13% strongly agreed. 20% agreed and 46% were not sure about this question. Conclusion: ENT is losing its ground as the most sought after choices in the post-graduation. This is evident even in the undergraduate level; the graduates are not sure whether they want to pick up ENT as their final career choice. It is strongly recommended that ENT should be again moved to final year as the exit examination to increase the exposure to this important field. It should also be one of the compulsory subjects in which House job rotation is given.