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Why become a doctor? The motivation of students to choose medicine as a professional career

Abstract:

Introduction: There are multiple factors that impact the decision of a young person to study a degree in medicine. These include, the opportunity to provide a service to the community, the professional prestige, the economic benefit inherent to exercising the profession, or the satisfaction of improving their immediate environment. Some studies link these factors with the permanence of physicians in training in academic programs, in such a way that the objective of the study was to analyse the motivation to study medicine in high school students. Material and methods: A cross-sectional quantitative study was carried out using the MEM-12 motivation scale. The trends in the motivation were analysed using the mean and the standard deviation. An exploratory factor analysis was also carried out using the principal components method, with the internal consistency of the tool being estimated using Cronbach's alpha. Results: The factor analysis led to the identification of two groups of motivators: social/altruistic (α=0.98) and prestige/economic (α=0.96), which together explained 88.98% of the variance and has an adequate global internal consistency (α=0.94). Conclusion: The medical students who participated in the study show a high tendency towards intrinsic motivation, that is, they are concerned about the benefit to their community and the contribution that they, as doctors, can make to improve their environment.