Impact of COVID-19 epidemic on medical students′ career perspectives: a qualitative study / 中华全科医师杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the impact of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic on career choosing perspective among medical students and to analyze the related factors.Methods:Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted during March 1-25 2020 among 19 medical students of 8-year program from Peking Union Medical College. The grounded theory and thematic analysis were applied to code the data and identify categories and factors.Results:Among the 19 respondents aged 19-26 years, 9 were males and 10 were female; 10 were at the clinical stage, and 9 were at the premedical stage; 3 respondents had family members involved in medical profession. Thematic analysis identified 6 main categories that affect the variability of medical students' career prospects under the COVID-19 pandemic. The 6 themes were individual characteristics of students; occupational characteristics; systemic factors; COVID-19 events; stressors of physicians and influence of job satisfaction.The outbreak affected everyone's mind of future career to varying degrees. The participants had been exposed to more negative aspects, while only one participant changed her career intention. There were conflicting views on whether to choose some specialties in future, such as respiratory medicine, infectious disease and critical care medicine. The participants feel more pressure as a doctor from the attitude of the public. Almost all participants mentioned feeling unsafe due to the high risk of occupational exposure and doctor-patient relationships. Most valued the support from their family, faculty, classmates, and volunteers. Many participants expressed their hope to improve the medical policies and systems.Conclusions:The influence of COVID-19 outbreak on medical students' career choosing can be positive as well as negative in different degrees. However, we found no evidence that it altered their perspectives substantially.