How does family medicine clerkship affect the attitudes to family medicine specialization?

Abstract

Background and Objectives - To investigate whether the attitude of final year medical students to family medicine specialization changes after family medicine clerkship.Method - The authors conducted an analysis of data on 90 final year medical students who attended a 4-week family medicine clinical clerkship in the period between January and June 2004, at Uludag University School of Medicine. The change in preference for family medicine specialization was determined from the responses to the pre-and post-clerkship questionnaires. Statistical analysis of the results was conveyed by utilizing the SPSS 11.0 and Epi-Info 2000 software program.Results - According to the answers given, rank of family medicine residency, which was 4.19 +/- 0.10 before clerkship, increased to 3.88 +/- 0.10 after clerkship. There was a significant difference in rank list between first and last test (before and after clerkship (p<0.05).Conclusion - Final year medical students' clerkship in family medicine clinical practice may encourage more medical school graduates to prefer family medicine as a career, which in turn, may contribute toward establishing a sound healthcare system.