The attractiveness of family medicine among Polish medical students.

Background: In many developed countries tuning supply and demand of medical doctors is a continuous challenge to meet the ever changing needs of community and individual patients. The long study period for medical doctors creates the opportunity to observe the current career preferences of medical students and evolution in time.

Objectives: To investigate the career choices of Polish students in different stages of their medical education.

[Evaluation of the risk of alcohol consumption and tobacco smoking among 6th year students of the Faculty of Medicine].

Implementing the National Health Program assumed in Poland for the years 2007 2015, family doctors in their everyday work try to contribute to reducing the popularity of tobacco smoking as well as reducing and changing the structure of alcohol consumption, whose aim is to reduce the negative health effects caused by those substances [9]. Non smoking personnel and prohibition of smoking in health care centres are the basis for effective anti-tobacco counsel. The same dependence occurs in the case of alcohol abuse.

[Students of the Faculty of Medicine and of the Division of Public Health of Medical University of Bialystok towards nicotine addiction against the background of the National Health Program in Poland].

In the years 1998-2005 in Poland a National Health Program was being implemented. One of its chief guidelines was to reduce the popularity of tobacco smoking, recognised as a proven, single factor influencing the etiology and the course of many diseases. The objective of the work was to establish whether the program's guidelines were reflected in individual attitudes of senior students of the Faculty of Medicine and of the Division of Public Health of Medical University of Bialystok.

[The attitude of sixth year students of the Faculty of Medicine towards the problem of addiction to nicotine].

According to the guidelines of the National Health Program, assumed by the Polish Ministry of Health for the years 1996 - 2005, it could be expected that, particularly at medical universities, education of future doctors in the field of problems connected to addiction to nicotine is taken into consideration. However, the research conducted in the form of anonymous survey among the sixth year students of the Faculty of Medicine at the Medical University of Białystok in the academic years 2001/2002 and 2004/2005 does not corroborate those expectations. The survey proves that the future graduates' knowledge of the aforementioned topic is fragmentary and confirms the necessity of including that issue in the educational curriculum in the area of family medicine.