ArticleBMC medical education2022
Motivation and personality factors of Generation Z high school students aspiring to study human medicine.
Article in BMC medical education, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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18 citing papers in PubMed, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- Career orientation among medical students in Germany: perceived motivating factors and barriers to pursuing oral and maxillofacial surgery - a nationwide survey.Oral and maxillofacial surgery · 2026Article
- Needs and wishes of Gen Z medical students: a prospective cross sectional single center study.Langenbeck's archives of surgery · 2026Article
- Burnout and work-life balance: the generational points of view.Insights into imaging · 2026Review
- The anatomy of a decision: exploring the push, pull, and personal factors of emigration intent among Turkish medical students.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Expanding recruitment to medical school: the motivations for and perceived barriers to entry of non-science entrants to a graduate-entry medical course: a qualitative study.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Predicting Veterinary Career Intentions Using Motivational Characteristics: A Survey Study Among Hungarian Students.Veterinary sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Measuring the effectiveness of career education at a medical university and future issues from the perspective of students' transformation: impact of a new career education program at a medical university on entrepreneurship effectiveness.Fujita medical journal · 2025Article
- Undergraduate medical education amidst volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Preuniversity Students' Perceptions and Attitudes About an Anatomy and Physiology Outreach Program: Survey Study and Inductive Thematic Analysis.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Explicit motives and personality characteristics in first year medical students: a multicentre quantitative study using McClellands motive disposition theory.BMC medical education · 2024Article
- How we achieve satisfaction in training - A German-wide survey on preferred training conditions among trainers and trainees for board certification in gastroenterology.Zeitschrift fur Gastroenterologie · 2024Article
- Comparison of medical students' considerations in choosing a specialty: 2020 vs. 2009/10.Human resources for health · 2024Article
- Do Moral Judgments in Moral Dilemmas Make One More Inclined to Choose a Medical Degree?Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Ethical Dilemmas for Dental Students in Greece.Dentistry journal · 2023Article
- Understanding of professionalism among medical students in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic - a qualitative monocentric study.GMS journal for medical education · 2023Article
- Performance assessment and improvement of a care unit for COVID-19 patients with resilience engineering and motivational factors: An artificial neural network method.Computers in biology and medicine · 2022Article
- Motivation of Pursuing High-Paying Profession When Entering Medical School May Have an Impact on Postgraduate Education - A Cross-Sectional Survey in Finland.Journal of medical education and curricular developmentArticle
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundA new generation of medical students, Generation Z (Gen Z), is becoming the predominant population in medical schools and will join the workforce in a few years' time. Medicine has undergone serious changes in high-income countries recently. Therefore, it is unclear how attractive the medical profession still is for high school students of Gen Z. The aim of this study was to investigate what motivation leads Gen Z students in their choice to study human medicine, and how they see their professional future. Our study was guided by motivation theory and the influence of personality traits and other personal factors on students' choice of university major.
methodsIn a cross-sectional online survey, we included third- and fourth-year high school students in Northern Switzerland. We examined the importance of criteria when choosing a university major: personality traits, career motivation, life goals, and other considerations influencing the choice of human medicine versus other fields of study. Results Of 1790 high school students, 456 (25.5%) participated in the survey (72.6% women, mean age 18.4 years); 32.7% of the respondents aspired to major in medicine at university. For all respondents, the foremost criterion for selecting a field of study was 'interest in the field,' followed by 'income' and 'job security.' High school students aiming to study human medicine attached high importance to 'meaningful work' as a criterion; supported by 36.2% of those students answering that helping and healing people was a core motivation to them. They also scored high on altruism (p < 0.001 against all groups compared) and intrinsic motivation (p < 0.001) and were highly performance- (p < 0.001) and career-minded (p < 0.001). In contrast, all the other groups except the law/economics group had higher scores on extraprofessional concerns.
conclusionsSwiss Gen Z students aspiring to study human medicine show high intrinsic motivation, altruism, and willingness to perform, sharing many values with previous generations. Adequate work-life balance and job security are important issues for Gen Z. Regarding the current working conditions, the ongoing shortage of physicians, and recent findings on physicians' well-being, the potential for improvement and optimization is high.
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