Factors that motivated medical students at abia state university uturu to choose medicine as a career

Abstract

Introduction Medicine is a noble profession which many people want to pursue for many reasons ranging from economic social and desire to help mankind. So many factors motivate people to choose medicine as a career. Motivation is an internal state that arouses, directs and maintains and sustains goal–oriented behaviour.1 In this questionnaire–based study we want to find what motivated a group of medical students to choose medicine as a career. Methodology This was a questionnaire based population study. Questionnaires were distributed to three levels of clinical students in Abia State University, Uturu. The data in the questionnaire included the following a) The love of science b) To save life c) Sickness in childhood d) Interest in medicine e) Grew up in the midst of medical personnel f) Social status g) Economic reasons h) Curiosity about human life i) It permits learning j) It is challenging k) Job security l) Close relative has an illness or died from an illness m) Pressure from family members n) Pressure from friends o) Pressure from community p) To be practical in life q) Because there is no physician in my family community r) Any other Respondents were encouraged to choose any number of the above options that influenced their decision to study medicine. The possible responses to each of the questions above were: i. Strongly agree. ii. Weakly agree. iii. Strongly disagree. iv. Weakly disagree. v. I do not know. The data was collated and analysed by manual calculations. Results The data collected was represented in the table below (Table 1)