ABSTRACT

Introduction: At beginning of medical school carrier orientation activities could play major role in career decisions for students. It is important to identify the variables that affect career choices at the beginning of medical school and correlations with different styles of personality. However, there has not been much work on how do the students perceive the influence of mentors in their decisions regarding specialization selection. We aimed the study, the perceived influence of the mentorship on the selection of specialization is investigated.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional survey was carried out and 282 students from College of Medicine, Majmaah University, were interviewed from 30 September 2019 to 30 October 2019. Demographic details were included various reasons like a speciality selection, intension to pursue post graduate, when decision was made on speciality selection and whether there was any form of mentorship.

Result: Total 282 students of aged 18years to 26 years and one student was under 18 years were participated in this study among them, 61% were male, and 39% were female. Most of the students (~50%) felt that the influence of the mentor is Neutral, the second-highest number thought that the influence is strongly positive. The average score ranged from 2.85±1.06 to 3.46±1.05. The highest score was for Internal Medicine, and the lowest was for Pharmacology (p=0.0001). The study also included a general questions "I do not have sufficient mentorship to pursue a career in academic medicine." 13.83% of students responded strongly agree, 21.28% mentioned Agree, 51.42% mentioned Neutral, and 8.51% and 4.96% responded as Disagree and strongly disagree respectively.

Conclusion: Our study conclude that most preferred specialities of medical students were highest and lowest in internal medicine and pharmacology respectively. The speciality selection preferences were found significant with gender of medical student, male medical students prefers surgical specialities whereas female medical students prefer obstetrics and gynaecology and paediatrics.

Key words: Mentorship, Mentor, Speciality, Career, Medical Students, Mentoring