The career choices of nursing students after the COVID-19 pandemic: A scoping review.

Career decision-making challenges remain a critical issue in vocational education, particularly at the secondary level, where many students choose majors that do not align with their interests and abilities. This condition highlights the need for early career guidance to help students map their career paths and develop their competencies appropriately. This study aims to develop a vocational career guidance module for Social Work students; to determine the validity of the module based on expert evaluation; to analyze the validity and reliability of the test instruments; and to examine the effectiveness, efficiency, practicality, and implementability of the module. This research employed the ADDIE R&D model involving 60 tenth-grade students of SMK Negeri 5 Samarinda, divided into experimental and control groups. The results indicate that the module is highly feasible, with material expert validation at 94% and media expert validation at 91%. The test instrument demonstrates strong quality, with 30 of 33 items deemed valid and a Cronbach’s Alpha reliability of 0.925. The module is proven to be highly effective (91.6%), efficient (89.6%), and practical (93.8%), with an implementation rate of 86%. In addition, teacher and student responses reached 90.8% (excellent category). Statistical analysis confirms significant improvement in students’ career decision-making skills, with tcount = 13.396 > ttable = 2.002, Sig. = 0.000, and an N-gain score of 0.72964 (high category). These results show that the developed module effectively enhances the career decision-making skills of Social Work vocational students.

Career development barriers encountered by Taiwanese pharmacy students: A qualitative study across levels of career adaptability.

Marital status has been associated with the well-being and career decisions of physicians; however, its role during residency remains underexplored, particularly in Japan. This study aimed to examine the association among marital status, psychological well-being, and intended specialty choice among postgraduate medical residents in Japan, with a focus on sex differences. The authors conducted a nationwide cross-sectional survey in January 2023 of postgraduate second-year residents in Japan immediately after the 2022 General Medicine In-training Examination (GM-ITE). Participants completed the survey and provided complete data on their marital status and outcome measures. The primary outcomes included depressive symptoms (assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-2), burnout symptoms, job satisfaction, and work-related stress (assessed using the Mini-Z 2.0) as well as gender role attitudes and intended specialty. The authors estimated adjusted prevalence ratios (PRs) using modified Poisson regression with generalized estimating equations. Among 2,721 residents included in the analysis (mean age, 27.7 years; 879 [32.3%] female), 551 (20.2%) were married, of whom 282 (51.2%) had physician spouses. Depressive symptoms were most common among unmarried residents (613/2,170 [28.2%]) and least common among those married to physicians (50/282 [17.7%]; P < .001). In adjusted analyses, being married to a physician was associated with a reduced depressive symptoms prevalence (PR, 0.62; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.48-0.81) and increased job satisfaction (PR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.02-1.18). Marital status showed no statistically significant association with burnout symptoms or work-related stress, and no statistically significant specialty preferences differences were observed according to marital status. Female residents, particularly those married to physicians, were more likely to disagree with traditional gender roles than their male counterparts. Among Japanese medical residents, marriage-particularly to another physician-was associated with fewer depressive symptoms and greater job satisfaction, whereas marital status was not associated with intended specialty choice.

Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) has a significant general practitioner (GP) workforce shortage, which will increase with the large number of GPs retiring shortly. Early and mid-career GPs who will absorb this shortfall are largely women, and many will take a temporary work absence to have children. This article explores the experiences of GPs in NZ who take a temporary work absence for parental leave, focusing on challenges and facilitators, and how this understanding might inform workforce planning and policy. A total of 137 participants contributed to an online qualitative survey about their experience of taking and returning from parental leave. Template analysis was used to develop a template and identify themes. Three identified themes encompassed the experience of parental leave, a return to work, and associated consequences. The reality of conflicting obligations and unexpected barriers as a parenting GP was a further integrative theme. This first study on GP parental leave in NZ reveals that parenthood influences career decisions, leave factors, and post-leave work patterns. General practice settings offer partial support, but reduced hours and role changes (including a shift towards narrower scope or episodic care) limit career progression and earning potential, disincentivising parenting GPs. With many GPs nearing retirement, the reality of current parental leave policies and general practice models that poorly accommodate GP parents risk exacerbating the primary care workforce crisis.

Introduction Medical students’ perceptions of the medical profession shape their identity and career decisions. However, little is known about how these perceptions evolve over the course of undergraduate medical education. This study addresses this gap by exploring how medical students’ views of the profession change across different years of training. Methods We employed an inductive constructivist approach to analyse data from 53,312 open-ended responses from the 2021 China Medical Student Survey (CMSS), representing over 120 medical schools across China. Natural language processing (NLP) techniques, including topic modeling and sentiment analysis, were used. We examined how students’ narrative descriptions of the medical profession and their sentiment scores varied across different years of undergraduate medical education. Results Students’ perceptions of the medical profession centred on two broad areas: academic aspects (specialised knowledge, skills, educational requirements, and lifelong learning) and career aspects (professional image and career prospect). Across all undergraduate medical education years, academic aspects appeared more frequently than career aspects. However, as students progressed through training, references to career prospect and educational requirements increased, indicating a developmental shift toward more pragmatic and future-oriented concerns. Sentiment analysis revealed consistently positive attitudes. However, the average sentiment scores gradually declined with each successive year. Discussion By examining students’ descriptions of the medical profession and their emotional tone, this study provides a clearer understanding of how views of the profession evolve throughout undergraduate medical education. The increasing attention to career-related concerns alongside the gradual decline in sentiment highlights the need for educational strategies that address students’ developing expectations, career planning needs, and emotional well-being. These nationally representative findings offer important insights into medical students’ perceptions of the profession, highlighting the value of NLP in analysing large-scale qualitative data and the need for future cross-cultural comparisons to explore how these perceptions evolve in diverse educational contexts.

Purpose The self-determination model of flow states that employees can take personal initiative and self-regulate their behaviour at work. Likewise, career self-management suggests that it is expected that employees will be proactive in career decisions. The present study examines the effects of two specific self-determination strategies, namely (1) weekly self-leadership (goal setting, self-rewards and visualising successful performance) and (2) weekly strengths use (i.e. the use of various capabilities people are good at, such as creativity, empathy and gratitude) on flow and the subsequent in-role and extra-role performance. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected among 97 employees who completed a survey once a week for three consecutive weeks (n = 291 occasions). Findings Results of multilevel modelling revealed that weekly self-leadership and weekly strengths use were each uniquely positively related to flow. Moreover, both weekly self-leadership and strengths use had positive indirect relationships with weekly in-role performance and weekly extra-role performance, respectively, through flow, while controlling for previous levels of these outcomes. Originality/value These findings offer support for the self-determination model of flow and show how self-determined behaviour, self-regulation and motivation can shape work experiences at a week-level. Furthermore, this proactivity and career self-management research shows how employees may be inherently self-regulatory to produce work outcomes aligned with the individual but also has long-term benefits in career growth and development.

This study examined the effectiveness of the researcher-developed Career Decision-Making Group Counseling Program in reducing career decision-making difficulties and supporting basic psychological needs among 10th-grade students (ages approximately 15–16). The study employed a randomized pretest–posttest–follow-up control group design. Thirty students with high levels of career decision-making difficulties were selected following screening and randomly assigned to the experimental group (7 girls, 8 boys) or the control group (8 girls, 7 boys). The experimental group participated in a 10-session group counseling program, whereas the control group received addiction-prevention education. Results indicated that the intervention significantly reduced overall career decision-making difficulties, F(1,28)=10.99, p<.001, as well as the lack of information, F(1,28)=15.64, p<.001, and inconsistent information, F(1,28)=9.36, p=.01. Findings suggest that the program is effective for reducing cognitive and informational barriers to career decision-making but does not substantially influence students’ basic psychological needs.

Social media has emerged as an important tool for disseminating information to medical students; however, their platform preferences and usage purposes remain unclear. We conducted a multicenter web-based survey of medical students from eight Japanese medical schools in 2025, assessing their overall social media use, platform preferences by purpose, daily usage time, and the perceived usefulness of social media for career decision-making. A total of 1,515 students participated in this study. YouTube (71.6%), Instagram (65.1%), and X (43.7%) were frequently used platforms, whereas Facebook (1.9%) was rarely used. Platform use differed by academic year: YouTube use was significantly higher among early-year students, whereas X use was significantly more common among advanced-year students (P = 0.043 and P < 0.001, respectively). Overall, 763 respondents (50.4%) perceived social media as useful for career decision-making, with X being used most frequently for this purpose, followed by YouTube and Instagram; this perception was significantly more common among the early-year students (P = 0.005). These findings provide valuable insights for educators and professional organizations seeking to engage medical students through social media. Understanding these trends is especially important as Japan faces a shortage of surgeons.

Following the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, U.S. states enacted divergent abortion policies that may influence women’s educational and career decisions. This study examined whether these policy shifts were associated with changes in female representation among medical school applicants and matriculants across the United States. Using publicly available state-level data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (2018–2025), we conducted a fixed-effects regression analysis comparing trends in states with abortion protections (Expanded/Protected) versus those with restrictive or absent protections (Hostile/Not Protected). Forty-five jurisdictions were included after excluding six with incomplete data. Across the study period, the proportion of female applicants to medical school increased nationally by 5.3 percentage points. However, after reversal of Roe v. Wade, this growth was significantly slower in Hostile/Not Protected states than in Expanded/Protected states (β = -0.58 percentage points per year; 95% CI -1.14 to -0.025; p = 0.041). No statistically significant difference was observed in female matriculants between policy groups (β = 0.68; 95% CI -0.70 to 2.06; p = 0.332). Parallel-trend testing confirmed similar trajectories across groups before the reversal of Roe v. Wade, supporting that divergence emerged after policy change. Subgroup analyses within restrictive states revealed no differential effects by type of abortion ban (trigger, pre-viability, or reason-based). These findings suggest that restrictive reproductive policies may be subtly reshaping women’s professional pathways even at the earliest stages of the physician workforce pipeline. Although absolute differences remain modest, sustained disparities in application growth could have long-term implications for gender equity and healthcare access, particularly in states already facing physician shortages. Understanding how reproductive autonomy intersects with higher education and workforce planning is essential to ensuring equitable representation in medicine and maintaining a resilient healthcare system.

Neurosurgery is a high-demand specialty in medicine, yet the factors influencing medical students' decision to pursue it remain underexplored. This study aimed to evaluate the demographics, academic year-wise interest, motivating and deterring factors, and the role of undergraduate exposure in influencing students' intentions to pursue neurosurgery. A cross-sectional survey of 503 Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) students across India was conducted. The survey assessed demographics, academic year, interest in neurosurgery, motivating and deterring factors, and perceptions of neurosurgical exposure during undergraduate education. Statistical analyses, including chi-square and multinomial logistic regression, were applied to determine significant associations between variables. The study revealed that interest in neurosurgery was highest among first- and second-year students, with a sharp decline observed by the internship year. Primary motivators included personal interest in neuroscience and the prestige of the field. Significant deterrents were limited exposure to neurosurgery and concerns about work-life balance. A gender disparity was found, with males showing greater interest in neurosurgery, mirroring national trends in the specialty. Half of the respondents believed that neurosurgery was underrepresented in the MBBS curriculum, and most supported its inclusion as a mandatory subject. Additionally, students expressed a preference for practicing neurosurgery in India, citing familial and financial considerations as key factors. The findings emphasize the importance of early exposure, mentorship, and curriculum improvements in shaping students' career decisions. Addressing regional and gender disparities, alongside ensuring robust neurosurgical training, is essential for fostering a motivated, diverse workforce in the field of neurosurgery.

Career adaptability of pharmacy students in Taiwan: A qualitative study.

Despite the significant shift in the career landscape for biology doctorates—a decline in academic positions and robust growth in industry employment—postdoctoral training remains the most common immediate next step. Guided by Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), this study examines (1) the self-efficacy, contextual factors, and outcome expectations that shape biology PhD graduates’ early career decisions, and (2) the perceived strengths and gaps in doctoral training identified after entering the job market. Drawing on semistructured interviews with 57 biology PhD graduates from the early career research (ECR) project, we found that graduates who pursued postdocs described strong self-efficacy in research and mentoring, whereas those in non-postdoc roles emphasized confidence in transferable skills. Principal investigators (PIs) were generally supportive yet often lacked the resources or networks to guide nonacademic transitions. Career decisions were also shaped by outcome expectations, with both extrinsic factors and intrinsic motivations influencing career choices. Additionally, regardless of career decisions, nearly all participants reported that their programs effectively developed core scientific and research skills but left critical gaps in business and management skills, advanced statistics and programming, and structured career development. These findings suggest areas in which biology doctoral programs may more intentionally support diverse career pathways, including expanded career development support, interdisciplinary skill-building, and strengthened faculty mentorship for diverse careers.

Suture the Future: Evaluating the Impact of Early Surgical Exposure for High School Students.

Purpose: This study examined the effects of high school track choice on subsequent educational pathways and career decidedness among students with similar levels of middle school academic achievement, and explored the educational implications of the vocational high school-to-junior college pathway. Methods: Using data from the Korean Educational Longitudinal Study 2005 (KELS2005), this study established the controll for middle school mathematics achievement and compared students who entered general high schools with those who entered vocational high schools. Multiple regression analyses including interaction effects between school type and school selection motives were conducted. Results: Middle school academic achievement was closely associated with high school track selection. In simple comparisons, the effect of vocational high school attendance on career decidedness was insignificant or negative; however, after controlling for academic achievement or limiting the sample to comparable achievement groups, the effect became significantly positive. In addition, selecting schools based on talents and interests showed a significant positive relationship with career decidedness. Conclusion: The findings suggest that the effects of high school type should be interpreted in relation to students’ prior academic achievement and the context of school choice rather than through simple mean comparisons. In particular, the vocational high school–junior college pathway may be positively associated with career decidedness among students with similar levels of academic achievement.

Background: The global shortage of healthcare workers continues to grow each year. In particular, low nurse staffing levels are known to be associated with adverse patient outcomes. Helping adolescents understand the nursing profession beyond stereotypical societal perceptions—and recognize its full range of roles—may make nursing a more attractive career option. However, little is known about the perceptions of adolescents who are in the process of making career choices. Objective: This study aims to determine the perceptions of high school adolescents in Türkiye regarding the image of the nursing profession. Method: The sample of this cross-sectional study consisted of 581 high school adolescents in Türkiye. Data were collected using the Descriptive Characteristics Form and the Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Image of Nursing Scale (APNIS). In addition to descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, one-way ANOVA, and Chi-Square analyses were performed. Results: The findings indicated that adolescents generally hold a positive perception of the nursing profession, with higher scores in the professional image, perception, and care and therapeutic role subscales, and lower scores in the communication, informative role, and healing environment subscales. A total of 65.7% of the adolescents reported that they did not intend to choose nursing as a career. The intention to choose nursing as a career was higher among adolescents who did not have a nurse in their family (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The results indicate that positive perceptions of the nursing image alone may not be sufficient in adolescents’ career decision-making and underscore the importance of presenting the profession’s roles in a comprehensive and realistic manner. While adolescents with a nurse in the family demonstrated more positive perceptions of the nursing profession (higher APNIS scores), their intention to choose nursing as a career was lower compared to those without a nurse in the family. These findings suggest that familiarity with the profession may positively influence professional image while simultaneously reducing career intention, possibly due to greater awareness of occupational challenges. The findings provide important insights into how adolescents form their perceptions of the image of nursing and may contribute to future research and educational initiatives aimed at increasing interest in the nursing profession.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Radiology Specialty Preferences Among Canadian Medical Students and Residents.

Ethical climate is an important component of professional development in medical education, yet little is known about how medical students' perceptions of ethical climate evolve during training or whether these perceptions are associated with career intentions. This study aimed to examine longitudinal changes in perceived and desired ethical climate among medical students and to explore potential associations with intended residency choice. We conducted a follow-up study of a student cohort among medical students enrolled in the Croatian-language medical program at the University of Split School of Medicine. Ethical climate was assessed using the Ethical Climate Questionnaire (ECQ), which evaluates nine ethical climate domains. Data were collected during the third and the sixth year of study. Students completed both perceived and desired versions of the ECQ. Paired analyses were performed for students who participated at both time points, while independent-sample analyses compared third and sixth-year cohorts. Ethical climate domains were also examined in relation to students' desired residency choice. A total of 70 third year and 77 sixth-year students participated, with 57 students included in paired analyses. The two dominant climates were Company profit and Laws and professional codes. Perceived ethical climate scores decreased significantly from the third to the sixth year in the Company rules and procedures (p < 0.001), while other domains remained stable. No statistically significant differences were observed in desired ethical climate domains between the third and sixth study years after Bonferroni correction. No associations were found between ethical climate domains and intended residency choice. Medical students' perceptions of institutional ethical climate change during undergraduate training, particularly regarding organizational structure, while ethical ideals remain largely stable. Ethical climate perceptions do not appear associated with residency choice, suggesting that ethical development and career decision-making may follow distinct trajectories. These findings highlight the importance of addressing the hidden curriculum and supporting structured reflection on ethical tensions encountered during clinical training.

Seismic shifts within academia over the last several decades have seen the growth of biomedical PhD recipients alongside the relative stagnation of tenure-track research-intensive faculty careers (RIFCs). This hypercompetitive academic job market has prompted interest in the paths of those who attain RIFCs. Understanding what drives recent biomedical PhDs to make their career decisions and persist toward them requires a clear picture of how career perceptions, motivations, and intentions develop and crystallize over time. Using annual in-depth interviews across nearly two decades, this report explores the evolution of career thinking and differentiation among 40 who attained a RIFC from diverse starting points to their attainment of a RIFC. Participants’ strategies for navigating early scientific experiences were patterned by their varied educational and socioeconomic backgrounds. Nearly half of participants did not start with or maintain stable interest in RIFCs, exhibiting changes in both PhD and postdoctoral phases. Participants highlighted six ‘drivers’ toward RIFCs including desire for independence/autonomy and contributing to knowledge/health. Our results are instructive for trainees and mentors guiding career exploration and differentiation.

ABSTRACT Background Academic procrastination is a common problem among university students and can negatively impact individuals’ futures. This study examined the relationships among cognitive flexibility, career decision efficacy, and academic procrastination, and also tested the buffering roles of self-esteem and socioeconomic status in these relationships. Methods A cross-sectional study was designed, and online data were collected from 911 university students in Türkiye using the Cognitive Flexibility, Career Decision Efficacy, Academic Procrastination, and Self-Esteem scales, along with demographic questions. Results Cognitive flexibility was positively related to career decision efficacy, while career decision efficacy was negatively related to academic procrastination. In addition, cognitive flexibility was indirectly related to academic procrastination via career decision efficacy, indicating a fully mediated pattern. Self-esteem significantly buffered the relationships between cognitive flexibility and both career decision efficacy and academic procrastination. The relationship between cognitive flexibility and career decision efficacy was stronger among individuals with low self-esteem. Furthermore, the positive relationship between cognitive flexibility and career decision efficacy was more pronounced among individuals with higher socioeconomic status (SES). Conclusions The findings suggest that cognitive flexibility and career decision efficacy may play important roles in understanding academic procrastination among university students. The study also highlights the potential protective roles of self-esteem and socioeconomic status in these relationships and offers important implications for academics and career professionals.