4.1 Interest in CT surgery as a career
Multiple studies report medical students’ perceptions about pursuing a career in CT surgery. Interest has been relatively low compared to other specialties such as general surgery despite the popularity of a surgical career. However, both interest in surgery and CT surgery seem to vary across stages of training, whether medical, premedical or at postgraduate clinical training level as well as gender.
Prospects of a CT surgery career were more highly regarded amongst preclinical students, in particular first year medicals students, in comparison to clinical year students. Even more so, interest is further diminished upon progression to foundation year, core surgical training (17) (in UK) or general surgical residency (18, 15) (in US). Besides, premedical students were found to be more enthusiastic about CT surgery than preclinical medical students (22). This may be due to loss of interest due to the lack of exposure in CT surgery throughout medical school and medical training owing to a lost opportunity to gain insight into the specialty. More students would have been involved in extra-curricular activities in other specialties and would be less likely to consider a specialty which they were not exposed to (17). In a cross-sectional study by Ghannam et al. (29), baseline interest in CT surgery was moderately high in high school students at 15% as compared to baseline interest in medicine and surgery at 38% and 24% respectively. Similarly, high baseline interest was reported in Sood et al. (22), raising a question about when the optimal time of exposure to the specialty would be to maximise and retain student interest.