What motivates medical students: how they see themselves and their profession

This paper describes a repertory grid study of medical students' perceptions of medicine and its specialties. By sampling student attitudes at different stages of training, the authors show that in this sample, final-year medical students have a more vocational out-look than first-year students, in whom concern with relief of suffering is more important than aiming at cure and in whom materialistic success matters less than doing something 'important for mankind.' This is reflected in a shift of interest away from the surgical specialties.