Can parents’ profession influence the attitude and competency among the first year medical students?

Introduction: The aspiration and career selection of students depends on the family atmosphere that includes parents’ profession. Children of doctors are more influenced by their parents in selecting the medical field. Yet, every year many students whose parents are from other professions also enroll in medical college. Students with humanitarian touch, service oriented minds aiming towards global health care should opt for this service. Awareness about this profession would certainly help to remove their misconceptions and achieve their aims. This study is aimed at finding out the differences in attitude and awareness about this profession between children of doctors and non-doctors.

 

Methods: A questionnaire was administered to all students admitted to first year MBBS course. Content, construct validity and test retest reliability were applied to a questionnaire that was developed by the investigators after consulting the experts in the field. Responses were compiled and statistically analysed. Reliability coefficient for each question was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha score. The data was analysed for normal distribution and parametric results were reported.

 

Results: The results revealed that motivation for selecting this profession seems to be less for social service and more for financial gains (75%) in both groups. 50% of doctor’s children were unaware of the syllabus of first MBBS and 55.6% of non-doctor’s children had the same opinion. High percentages of the entire study group were unaware of the intricacies of learning medicine.

 

Conclusion: Children of doctors and non-doctors had similar attitude towards medical education.