4.2 Factors influencing perception of a career in CT surgery
The ability to actively influence patients’ lives as well as intellectual challenge are predominant reasons supporting selection of CT surgery careers. Respondents with a declared interest in the specialty have different established interests than non-interested participants with the former allocating more value to research opportunities and new technological procedures (13). Nonetheless, various dissuading factors persist, mainly in concern to the difficulty and length of training and work-like balance (5) as well as the personality of CT surgeons (20) and limited opportunities (5,12). Interestingly, a history of previous scandals in the field was not influential on the perception of CT surgery as a prospective career. Such decision-making elements should all be considered in the design of exposure programmes and recruitment schemes in order to provide a realistic portrayal of the surgical area and encourage fruitful and inspiring interactions between trainees and consultants already in the specialty and more junior members.
The overall perspective of CT surgery relates to its surgical emergency-heavy nature, but it is not solely constituted of trauma and emergency patients. CT surgeon-orientated programmes should be focused on offering practice patterns of surgeons to better inform students on lifestyle. Enabling students to envision these challenges is essential for a balanced representation of the career without any concealment or misinformation (13). With core surgical trainees frequently holding a common interest in both CT surgery and vascular surgery, given the similar patient cases and vascular work, an exploration into the benefits of promoting these two specialties together may provide valuable insight (3).
Another noticeable discrepancy is the significant difference in interest between men and women, with men being more interested in CT surgery than women. In all studies and at all levels of study, interest in a CT career has been higher in men than in women. Despite the varying degree of this difference from one study to another, the extent of this disparity was generally reported to be lower in less advanced stages of training such as premedical and preclinical students, yet still evident just the same. Proposed explanations for this phenomenon include the difficulty to maintain a work-life balance especially in family planning as well as the difficulty of taking maternity leave during training or post-training and re-entering the specialty (21). Such deterring factors may be addressed through the introduction of more female cardiothoracic surgery mentors and family planning incentives such as less-than-full time training options (13).