Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction

The choice of a specialty in medicine is a decision that is imposed on new graduates. The aim of our study was to assess the perception of the specialty of Endocrinology and Nutrition among a large sample of medical students in their final year of their degree or prior to taking their Medical Internship Examination in order to know if they would choose Endocrinology and Nutrition for their specialised training, as well as the most and least attractive factors of the specialty.

Materials and methods

We designed an anonymous survey with seven questions that was distributed via telematics among the students of one of the main Spanish academies dedicated to preparation of exam that allow access to specialised medical training.

Results

A total of 2193 responses were obtained. Of these, 63.1% corresponded to “junior doctors” (who would take their exam in 2021) and 36.9% to final-year medical students (who would take their exam in 2022). 2.6% of the students surveyed considered the speciality of Endocrinology and Nutrition as their first choice for their specialised training at the time of the survey. Those students who rated the specialty of Endocrinology and Nutrition as their first choice considered the importance of the teaching of the subject in their decision with average value of 7.8 (SD: 2.2) being 10 extremely important. The most attractive aspect of the speciality among the students is that “it has a logical pathophysiological basis” (53.6%) followed by “the work is dynamic, varied and with great scientific soundness of its benefits” (28.0%). The least attractive aspect of the speciality among the students is that “it has few interventional techniques” (44.9%). Finally, students considered the most attractive part of the speciality to be hypothalamic-pituitary pathology (26.6%), diabetes mellitus (22.0%), thyroid pathology (17.8%), clinical nutrition (11.1%) and adrenal pathology (9.7%). Among students intending to choose Endocrinology and Nutrition for their specialised training, the most attractive part of the specialty was diabetes mellitus (35.1%), clinical nutrition (17.6%), hypothalamus-pituitary pathology (15.8%), thyroid pathology (14.0%) and obesity and dyslipidaemias (14.0%).

Conclusions

The teaching of the subject is an important factor in the choice of speciality. It would be interesting to increase and show the different interventional techniques in Endocrinology and Nutrition.