ArticleBMJ open2018
Psychiatry as a career choice among medical students: a cross-sectional study examining school-related and non-school factors.
Article in BMJ open, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Attitudes and Career Preferences Towards Psychiatry in South Asia: A Narrative Review of Medical Student and Physician Perspectives.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Perception of medical students' understanding of psychiatry as a future career in Saudi Arabia.BJPsych international · 2026Article
- Personality traits and medical specialty preference among medical students and graduates: a scoping review.Croatian medical journal · 2025Article
- Starting Solo: Experiences and Challenges of Early Career Psychiatrists in Private Practice in India.Cureus · 2025Article
- Factors influencing medical students in a lower-middle income country to consider psychiatry as a career option.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Impacts of clinical psychiatric posting experience on specialization intention and associated factors among Nursing Science students.BMC nursing · 2024Article
- Intracurricular Factors Influencing Medical Students' Specialty Choice: A Systematic Review.Advances in medical education and practice · 2024Review
- Perspectives of psychiatric nurses on the stigmatization of mental healthcare in Ghana: a qualitative study.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Medical students' attitude towards psychiatry: a comparison of past and present.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Mental Health Prescribers' Perceptions on the Use of Pharmacogenetic Testing in the Management of Depression in the Middle East and North Africa Region.Pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine · 2023Article
- Factors influencing career preference in mental health among nursing students and intern nurses in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.PLOS global public health · 2023Article
- ["Psychiatry Takes its Time … " Why Does One Become a Psychiatrist? - A Qualitative Study].Psychiatrische Praxis · 2022Article
- A week long "pep" talk - initial and 2-3-year longitudinal data on the Ottawa Psychiatry Enrichment Program (OPEP).BMC medical education · 2022Article
- Why psychiatry as a career: Effect of factors on medical students' motivation.Journal of family medicine and primary care · 2019Article
- Factors associated with medical students' choice of psychiatry as future specialty: a cross-sectional study.Advances in medical education and practice · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesGiven the low recruitment to psychiatry worldwide, the current study aimed to examine how premedical and intramedical school factors, perception of career aspects, attitudes towards psychiatry, stigma towards mental illness and personality traits may affect the likelihood of psychiatry as a career choice.
designCross-sectional online study.
participants502 medical students from two public medical institutions in Singapore.
methodsWe critically examined existing literature for factors identified to influence psychiatry as a career choice and explored their effects in a group of medical students in Singapore. To avoid overloading the regression model, this analysis only included variables shown to have significant association (p<0.05) with the outcome variable from the initial Χ
resultsA considerable number of non-medical school factors such as preschool influence and interest, personality traits and importance of a high status specialty in medicine were found to affect students' choice of psychiatry as a career. Among medical school factors, attending a psychiatry/mental health club was the only influential factor. Negative attitudes towards psychiatry, but not stigma towards people with mental illness, significantly predicted the likelihood of not choosing psychiatry as a career.
conclusionsImproving educational environment or teaching practice in psychiatric training may aid in future recruitment for psychiatrists. While the changing of premedical school influences or personality factors may be infeasible, medical schools and psychiatry institutes could play a more critical role by enhancing enrichment activities or clerkship experience to bring about a more positive attitudinal change towards psychiatry among students who did consider a career in psychiatry.
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