Abstract

Background: Reducing the maternal and neonatal mortality rate are the predominant goals of achieving sustainable development for which it is important to ensure adequate health workforce, especially pediatric professionals at all levels of health care. Recent trends reveal a significant decline in the number of doctors opting for pediatrics specialization. Objective: This study was carried out to explore the career preferences of the undergraduate medical students and factors influencing career choice. Methods: This cross sectional study was carried out among 362 undergraduate medical students studying in prefinal and final year during a period of three months. A self administered questionnaire was used to obtain information regarding the career preferences and factors influencing the decision making. Attitudes regarding career choice was assessed using Likert scale and later recoded into binomial variables. Statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS software. Results: Majority of the participants were females (61.8%). The individual choice of specialty revealed that 12.2% of the males and 18.5% of the females wanted to take up pediatrics as their first career choice while 5.5% of the males and 7.7% of the females had pediatrics as their second choice. Overall, more females preferred pediatrics as a career choice compared to the males. The observed difference was statistically significant (p

Key words: Career choice, medical education, pediatrics, neonatal mortality.