The effect of fear and uncertainty developed on the ground of the COVID-19 pandemic in medical faculty students on the expectation of professional results and field selection, Bolu example, 2020

Background: The COVID-19 epidemic has continued to be an important public health problem on a global scale since the first day it started. The high mortality rates of the epidemic, many uncertainties regarding the source, course and nature of the epidemic adversely affect the mental health of individuals. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of fear and uncertainty developed on the background of the COVID-19 pandemic in medical school students on the expectation of professional results and the choice of specialization in medicine. Materials and Methods: The population of this cross-sectional study is all students studying at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University Faculty of Medicine in the 2020-2021 academic year. The questionnaire used in the study consists of seven parts and includes three scales whose validity and reliability studies have been conducted by other researchers, and questions prepared by the researchers in the light of the information in the literature. The first part is sociodemographic characteristics, the second part is questions about the COVID-19 disease, the third part is the coronavirus fear scale, the fourth part is the intolerance to uncertainty scale, the fifth part is the professional result expectation scale, the sixth part is the thoughts on choosing a medical school, and the seventh part is the choice of specialty in medicine. The questionnaire created through Google Forms was applied to the students online. In the analysis of the research, descriptive statistics, Pearson Chi-Square test, Sperman Correlation Analysis, Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis test, McNemar test were used and the level of significance was accepted as p<0.05. Necessary permissions and ethical approval were obtained for the research. Results: 58.3% of the participants were female, 41.7% male, and the mean age was 21.3±2.1 years. Women's coronavirus fear scale total score, intolerance of uncertainty scale total score, and thoughts on medicine preference scale total score are higher than men's. As the age increases, the expectation of professional results and positive thoughts towards the choice of medical school decrease. Students in the preclinical period show more intolerance to uncertainty. With the COVID-19 pandemic, clinical students think that they will not have the opportunity to discover the specialty they want, while preclinical students think that they will find new areas of interest for the selection of specialization. While fear of coronavirus increases intolerance to uncertainty, it does not affect the expectation of professional results. While students with high fear of coronavirus preferred internal branches more before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in choosing their specialty in medicine, intolerance to uncertainty does not affect the choice of specialty in medicine. The choice of medical specialization of students who do not regret their choice of medical faculty is in favor of surgical branches and was not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. While internal branches were preferred more before the COVID-19 pandemic, after the pandemic, surgery and branches that do not see patients are more interested.