Background: Achieving the highest goals of public health needs to establish precise planning for provision of appropriate career platform for medical students, persuasion of graduates to work in public health system and recognition of weak points within the system. This study aimed to identify educational and career goals and preferences of medical students and effective factors on them.
Methods: The study included entering medical students of 2005 to 2013, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran. The questionnaire was made up of demographic characteristics and questions about educational and career goals. Impact of demographic characteristics on the responses was also statistically analyzed.
Results: In this survey, among the target group of 256 students, 100 students (39.1%) responded to the questionnaires. Of these, 64% were men. Mean ± SD age of respondents was 22.6 ± 2.4 years. Most respondents (94%) expressed that they are inclined to higher levels of education after medical doctorate (MD). Among different specialties, cardiology (13%) and dermatology (11%) were the most popular fields. Ten percent of respondents also intended to study medical PhDs, of them genetics and biochemistry were more popular. While in the non-clinical courses, interest in a certain specialty constituted the main motivation, in clinical courses, higher income was the main motivation (P = 0.03).
Conclusion: Increasing the efficiency of medical education, effective guidance during academic education and providing medical graduates with appropriate career platform necessitates recognition of medical student's interests and goals. Hence, investigation of these variables in other parts of Iran with larger sample sizes and also provision of suitable infrastructure for the future career of medical students seems to be inevitable.