First-year medical students' attitudes toward radiology

To explore the perspectives of entering medical students, a questionnaire was completed anonymously by 171 students in September of their first year of medical school. The authors investigated their attitudes toward radiology relative to other specialties and their perspective concerning which factors would influence their eventual choice of a specialty. Upon entering medical school, 33.3% of the students indicated that they had chosen a specialty, and 7.4% of these students had selected radiology. Radiology was perceived as a well-paid specialty with a pleasant lifestyle. These are factors that were perceived as very important regarding influence on eventual choice of specialty. However, radiology was believed to have an undesirably low level of patient contact and was perceived as not being intellectually exciting. We plan to follow this group of students prospectively through medical school to see whether their attitudes change toward radiology as a career.