The Medical Student's Choice of Psychiatry As a Career: a Survey of One Graduating Class

The authors distributed a questionnaire to all members of a medical school graduating class (N = 85) to identify those students who had "seriously considered psychiatry as a career choice at any time." Eight such students were identified, 5 of whom chose specialties other than psychiatry. The authors' objective was to identify the critical factors in these 8 students' final selection. Their results support the importance of the clinical clerkship in the students' decision making; the results also indicate considerable shifting in career choice during the students' medical school years and reveal a strong antipsychiatry bias on the part of nonpsychiatric faculty.