The dynamics of medical students career and medical specialty choices, and their implication for medical education in developing countries: a Maiduguri Medical School study.

This is a cross-section study based on questionnaire of the students in all the three clinical years of the medical school at the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria. The aim of the study was to explore the dynamics of career and medical specialisation decision and inclinations of the students with the view to seeing how they match the need of medical services in the country, and hence to discover those areas and methods which may be useful in this connection. The study shows that previous (including pre-medical school) exposures to the chosen specialties and ongoing medical school exposures and role models are the most important factors in specialty choices while job opportunities and local trends are important in the career decisions. It is therefore proposed that since medical exposures and role models can be influenced in the medical curriculum, it would be necessary to do this in the specialties of general medical practice (Family Medicine, Primary Medical Care) and the Community Medicine which are vital in the containment of the communicable and poverty/social inequality disease problems of this and other developing countries.