Future choice of specialty among students in a Caribbean medical school

The medical specialities chosen by medical students for their careers play an important part in the development of health care services. Our objective is to examine medical students' perception of clinical specialty while in the preclinical school.

A cross-sectional study was done among all the preclinical students using a structured questionnaire. The questions explored the demographic data, generic factors considered as important in their choice of specialty as well as factors that influence the students' attractiveness to various medical specialities. The study was conducted among medical students of Spartan Health Sciences University, St. Lucia.

Out of 90 questionnaires, 76 were correctly filled, producing response rate of 84.4%. The ages of respondents were between ages 19 to 43, with mean age of 25.3. There were forty five (59.2%) male and thirty (39.5%) female resulting into ratio 1.5:1. Internal medicine was the most attractive specialty with attractive factor with mean of 1.2 and SD of 0.46. The aspects of medicine that interest the students most is diagnosis and treatment of diseases; 50 (65.8%), followed by interpersonal interaction with patients; 44 (57.9%) while the least attractive aspect is research; 11 (23.7%).

Our study showed that few students are interested in basic biomedical research; hence the need to address this apathy in the medical curriculum.