Examining the occupational anxiety levels and career preferences of Medical Faculty students

The purpose of this study is to examine the career plans, professional anxieties, goals, and expectations of medical school students who are aspiring physicians. The study includes 5th and 6th-year students from the Medical Faculties of Istanbul, Istanbul-Cerrahpaşa, Hacettepe, Kafkas Kars, Van Yüzüncü Yıl, and Harran Universities. As of 2022, these students, who are in their 5th and 6th year of study, were admitted to the top three highest-scoring and bottom three lowest-scoring public universities according to their 2017 university placement exam scores. The aim is to investigate the influence of the university attended on the factors that determine students' career preferences and professional anxieties. In addition, demographic factors such as students' family backgrounds were also examined. The "Career Expectations Scale" developed by Selçuk Tanç (1999), consisting of dimensions of self-realization, social expectation, power use, material expectation, and emotional expectation, and the "Professional Anxiety Scale" consisting of 18 questions were used in the study, and were answered by 492 students. As a result, the majority of students expressed a desire to specialize, with surgery and basic sciences being the least preferred and internal medicine being the most preferred specialty. On the other hand, it was found that students who chose to attend medical school voluntarily and those whose mothers had higher levels of education had higher career expectations. Medical students attending lower-scoring universities had higher career expectations and lower average levels of professional anxiety compared to those attending higher-scoring universities. Furthermore, it was found that women had higher average levels of professional anxiety than men, and that those whose mothers were physicians had higher levels of professional anxiety than others. According to the results of the correlation analysis, there was a weak but significant positive relationship between career expectations and professional anxiety levels, and the regression analysis indicated that an increase in students' professional anxiety statistically increased their career expectations.