The Tendency of Senior Medical Students to choose a Specialty: The difference between what students want and what society needs

Choosing a medical specialty by students is an important issue because it has significant implications both for the composition and quality of the human resources required by the health care system. The purpose of this study was to investigate last year medical students' preferences of specialty choice and society’ needs in Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences. This descriptive-analytic study was carried out on a census sampling of last year medical students   during 2017-18. So then, data were collected by a researcher-made questionnaire whose validity and reliability were confirmed in a preliminary study. Moreover, data were analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics and SPSS-22 software. More than 50% (114/205) of medical students were candidates for three fields of radiology, ophthalmology, and dermatology, while the university's capacity for these courses was only 10% (16/154); and vice versa, applicants for three fields of emergency medicine, Internal medicine and pediatric with a capacity of 37% (55/154) were only 3% (6/205) of the students applying for these courses. According to the Chi-square test, statistically significant differences were   observed between the specialty choice priorities of medical students and the capacity of specialized fields (p<0.05).  In addition, the findings showed no coordination between the tendency of medical students to specialty choice and the society’ requests.  Therefore, while determining the factors affecting students' tendency towards specialized courses, it is recommended to provide guidance and encouragement in selecting the desired fields.