ReviewAdvances in medical education and practice2024
Intracurricular Factors Influencing Medical Students' Specialty Choice: A Systematic Review.
Review in Advances in medical education and practice, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- A perioperative management elective as a transition-to-practice intervention: effects on preparedness, professional identity, and career decision-making.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Dynamics of career attractiveness and preferences among Swiss medical students: an observational study at the end of the master's program.Medical education online · 2025Observational
- Association between research exposure and medical specialization choices among medical students and trainees in Saudi Arabia: A cross sectional study.Journal of family & community medicineArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Medical school graduates are faced with the difficult decision of choosing a specialty training program. Understanding the decision criteria as well as the intracurricular factors-which have been studied less frequently and thus lack clarity-may help to prevent an impending shortage of certain specialists and to ensure the recruitment of young doctors into supposedly less popular specialties. Evidence-based changes to the medical curriculum are needed to support the balanced development of health care systems with demand-driven staffing of all specialties, especially in the outpatient sector and in rural areas. The aim of this systematic review was to identify the intracurricular factors that influence medical students' choice of specialty that have been described in the international literature. Methods: A systematic review was conducted by searching Medline. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria to the 2537 primary results and 19 hits from an additional manual search, data were extracted from 334 studies. In addition, a quality assessment of all included studies was performed. Results: A total of 14 influencing factors were identified from the reviewed literature, of which "clinical-practical experience", "clinical role models", and "voluntary offerings" were mentioned most frequently. We sorted the factors into four main categories: "Teaching"; "Teaching environment, influence and interaction"; "Curriculum"; and "Voluntary work". The studies were highly heterogeneous regarding research methods and the quality of reporting. Conclusion: Involving students in the planning and structuring of clinical phases, active feedback, voluntary offerings, seminars/simulations, and involvement in the clinical team can increase a specialty preference. Conversely, discrimination, prejudice and poor quality of teaching and clinical exposure may act as a deterrent. It is necessary to sensitize medical staff regarding their role and influence in the decision-making process. Further prospective and qualitative research is needed to address this issue adequately.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.