Abstract
This longitudinal study aimed at investigating Polish medical students’ career choice motivation, factors influencing specialty choices, professional plans and expectations. The same cohort of students responded to the same questionnaire, at the end of Year 1 and Year 6. The Chi-square, Mann–Whitney U tests and logistic regression were used in analyses. The results showed that altruistic and scientific reasons were the main motives for choosing a medical career. The motives remained stable over time. The effect of gender on altruistic motivation was stronger at the end of the study, with females’ rating higher. The most favored career paths were associated with non-primary care specializations and work in a hospital. Results of the multivariate logistic regression showed that primary care specializations were more attractive to females, final year students, those from small agglomerations, and those less concerned about high earnings. Preferences regarding sector of work were formed at later stages of training. A preference shift was observed, between Year 1 and Year 6, towards favoring work in the public sector. Predictors of the desire to work in the public sector were: being a male and the final year student, paying less attention to high earnings, wanting certainty of finding work, having a stronger need for interesting and socially important work. A significant decline in the level of interest in seeking employment abroad was observed with the progress of studies. Our findings are likely to provide useful information for educators, policy planners and policy makers.
Highlights
Economic and social changes in former East European countries in the last two decades have had an enormous impact on many areas of life, including people’s values, aspirations and work attitudes
Between 2004 and 2007, more than 6,000 physicians successfully applied for the professional verification certificate, allowing them to apply for work in other European Union (EU) countries
In the same period of time 2,961 Polish doctors were newly registered to practice in EU countries
Summary
Economic and social changes in former East European countries in the last two decades have had an enormous impact on many areas of life, including people’s values, aspirations and work attitudes. The majority of them came from Scandinavian countries and the USA (online report: study in Poland 2012). These changes brought new challenges to medical educators, health care planners and managers, both locally and internationally. The initial challenge to the medical faculty was to develop their skills to enable teaching in English for students coming from different linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds. These changes resulted in wider use of the English language at universities and enrichment of academic life for Polish students. There is no hard data, it is quite likely that the internationalization of university life would make seeking employment or further studies abroad a more realistic option for Polish medical students
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