Analysis of senior medical students' preferences in specialty choice a survey in a medical school in northern Taiwan.

Background: Medical centers in Taiwan have found it difficult to recruit sufficient residents in the fields of surgery and gynecology & obstetrics over the last few years. It is important to realize why this phenomenon occurs. The purposes of this study are to investigate the important (critical) factors that Taiwan medical students currently consider when choosing their specialties, and to derive the relative weight of each factor.

Factors influencing medical students' choice of specialty.

Background/purpose: Medical school graduates are the source of a country's physicians. Determining how the graduates of these schools select their areas of specialization is the key to achieving a balanced distribution of doctors among all specialties. The purposes of this study were to determine the factors that influence medical students' choice of medical specialty, and to derive the relative weight of each factor.