Assessing Canadian medical students' familiarity with and interest in pursuing a career in community medicine.

OBJECTIVES: Following the SARS outbreak, large gaps in the public health workforce have been identified. This study sought to understand the perceptions and attitudes of Canadian medical students with regard to public health to determine how this impacted their choice towards a career in Community Medicine (CM). METHODS: Five focus groups of 11-12 medical students from all years were recruited at McMaster University, Université de Sherbrooke, University of Toronto, University of Manitoba and the University of British Columbia. A professional facilitator was hired to conduct the focus groups using a unique computer-based facilitation system. Questions in both the focus group and an accompanying survey sought to determine medical students' understanding and exposure to public health and how this impacted their attitude and choice towards a career in community medicine. The transcripts were independently reviewed and analyzed by each of the authors to identify themes. RESULTS: Four major themes related to choosing Community Medicine as a career were identified: 1) poor understanding of the role of Community Medicine specialists in public health practice, 2) perceived lack of clinical work and relevance of public health to clinical practice, 3) perceived lack of exclusivity of Community Medicine specialty, 4) incentives and disincentives to pursuing Community Medicine. CONCLUSION: Better education of students on the role of CM specialists through increasing exposure to role models and demystifying inaccurate perceptions of CM through integration of public health with clinical medicine may potentially increase medical student entry into Community Medicine.

Canadian medical students' perceptions of public health education in the undergraduate medical curriculum.

PURPOSE: To understand the perceptions and attitudes of Canadian medical students toward their undergraduate medical public health curriculum and to identify student suggestions and priorities for curriculum change. METHOD: Five focus groups of 11 or 12 medical students from all years of medical school were recruited at McMaster University Faculty of Health Sciences, Université de Sherbrooke Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine, and University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine between February and April 2006. A professional facilitator was hired to conduct the focus groups using a unique, computer-based facilitation system. Questions in both the focus group and an accompanying survey sought to determine medical students' understanding and exposure to public health and how this impacted their attitudes and choices toward careers in the public health medical specialty of community medicine. The transcripts were independently reviewed and analyzed by each of the authors to identify themes. RESULTS: Four major themes related to students' desired curriculum change were identified: (1) poor educational experiences in public health courses, (2) lack of positive role models, especially exposure to community medicine specialists, (3) emphasis on statistics and epidemiology, and (4) negative attitudes toward public health topics. CONCLUSIONS: Students are disillusioned, disengaged, and disappointed with the public health curriculum currently being provided at the Canadian medical schools studied. Many medical students would prefer a public health curriculum that is more challenging and has more applied field experience and exposure to public health physician role models.