Characteristics of role models who influenced medical residents to choose surgery as a specialty: exploratory study

Choosing a medical specialty and making decisions concerning a career are difficult processes for medical students and newly graduated physicians.This exploratory study aimed to investigate the influence of role models on the choice of surgery as a career, and to determine the most influential model characteristics.Qualitative analysis on responses to a self-administered questionnaire, in different teaching-learning settings.Residents from all years of various surgical subspecialties in a university hospital were included in a survey about the factors that determined their choice of surgery. The questions included items on whether a role model had influenced them in choosing surgery, and the personal or professional characteristics of the models that had been most influential. The responses were subjected to qualitative content analysis.Sixty-four out of 96 medical residents participated. Fifty-three residents (82.8%) acknowledged the influence of role models. Sixteen model characteristics were indicated as important, with 136 mentions. Characteristics classified as technical skills (55%), such as"medical knowledge"and "manual dexterity" predominated over humanistic characteristics (35%), such as "patient-physician relationships" and "ethical behavior". However, this difference was not statistically significant (Fisher test, P = 0.11).There were no age differences regarding the proportions mentioning "technical" and "non-technical" attributes, but female residents mentioned significantly more technical skills than their male colleagues did.The influence of role models seems to be an important factor determining the choice of surgery as a career. The influential characteristics of the models include not only technical but also humanistic qualities.