Reasons to Choose Medical Career, Causes for Stress, Level of Satisfaction after Admission to a Medical School - A study among MBBS Students in a Medical School in India

Selecting medical career is one of the most crucial choice that a student makes. It is important to understand the reasons behind this choice. Medical students have high stress levels due to the daily life stressors, academic and financial burden, which may cause considerable psychological and physical damages and affect the satisfaction levels.

Studying the reasons to choose medical career, causes for stress and satisfaction levels amongst MBBS students of all professionals.

526 MBBS students of all professionals participated in the study through a self- administered questionnaire. Satisfaction level among the students was graded using the Likert’s scale. Descriptive data analysis was done using frequencies and percentages.

Earning name, fame and social status and family / peer pressure were the most common single reasons to choose medical career by 15.8 % students each and 17.9% of students gave dual response of earning money and earning name, fame and social status. Total 410 out of 526 (77.9%) students were suffering from stress. Study/ work load followed by financial burden to the family were most common reasons. Level of satisfaction increased with increasing seniority with students of batch 2016 being most satisfied.

Thus, the students need proper guidance to prevent the burnout later on. Regular feedbacks from students in all the fields, including difficulties faced by them are important to keep up their interest and achieve goals which carries huge implications for revolutionizing teaching methodologies and increasing satisfaction levels in medical training in our country.