The influence of socio-demographic features and rotation of plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery on the attitudes of Turkish medical students’ choice of careers

The choice of specialization branch is one of the most important decisions for the medical students during the medical education all over the world. It is known that short rotation period causes insufficient information about the subspecialty branches of medicine during the rotation period of medical education. The objective of the present study was to examine the tendency of students toward plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery (PRAS), which has one of the short rotation periods during medical education in Turkey. In this study, 90 male and 63 female fourth year medical students were included. According to our findings, 133 students agreed that PRAS will be one of the splendid occupations of the future. However, only 10 students' (6.5%) primarily chose PRAS as a specialization branch. The high complication risks which were believed to be following the reconstructive surgery was the deterrent factor to prefer PRAS as a specialization branch (P=0.036), and also the long educational period and the requirement of experience for PRAS specialization (94.1%) have influence on the choice of students making career in PRAS. The socio-demographic features of the students did not have any statistically significant effect on their responses to questions (P>0.05). © Springer-Verlag 2005.