Motivation and Preferences of Human Resources in the Medical Field – Premises for Further Policies in the Medical Sector in Romania

Abstract The health professionals might be driven by different reasons in choosing their future medical specialty like passion, personal interest, balance with the family life, financial expectation, prestige etc. Our study aimed to explore the dominant preferences of the medical students in choosing their medical specialty in relation to their personal profile. We analysed the options of 3424 students from three cohorts the biggest public medical university of Romania. We found that most of the medical student are very career oriented, with low interest in having a family or children during their student life, most are income-dependent by others, and driven by passion/interest in choosing their future specialty, but with low interest for family medicine. Our data could be relevant for the policy makers for tailoring the long-term human resources polices adapted to the students’ values, with the aim to assure an equitable coverage with medical services all over the country.