Surgery as a Career Choice among Medical Undergraduates in a Developing Country

The distribution of medical manpower among various specialties should be of interest to government, health administrators and medical educators of any nation. The medical specialties chosen by medical undergraduates as their career choice are an important determinant of this. This survey of 114 students using an objective semi structured questionnaire explores factors influencing specialty choices of medical students at Benue State University, College of Heath Sciences, Makurdi, Nigeria with special focus on Surgery. The four most popular specialties were Surgery (35%) Internal Medicine (25%), Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology (14%) each. Others include Pathology and Community Medicine (5%) each and Family Medicine (2%). These are determined by factors like natural interest (40%), job-satisfaction and personal convenience (12%) each, role model (3%), gender-issue, personal aptitude and no specific reason (1%) each. Factors like quality of teaching, expected financial reward, religion and family influence have no influence on choice of specialties in the studied population. While majority of the students (91%) considered surgery as important and interesting, 52.6% will want more time allocated to bedside teaching and 17.5% will want improvement in quality of lectures and teaching to help them in better understanding of the specialty. Insight into the reasons underlying the choice of medical career in a country can improve medical career planning. This should guide government’s health administrators and educators as they may be responsible for mal-distribution of medical manpower across the various specialties.