Korean J Fam Pract 2019; 9(1): 23-28  https://doi.org/10.21215/kjfp.2019.9.1.23
Medical Students’ Perception of Family Medicine and Career Choice
Moon Young Kang, Na Yeon Kim, Jang Mi Lee, Seung Wan Hong, Young Sung Suh, Dae Hyun Kim*
Department of Family Medicine, Keimyung University Dongsan Hospital, Daegu, Korea
Dae Hyun Kim, Tel: +82-53-250-7548, Fax: +82-53-250-7071, E-mail: dhkim@dsmc.or.kr, ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7313-2384
Received: March 13, 2018; Revised: August 9, 2018; Accepted: October 31, 2018; Published online: February 20, 2019.
© The Korean Academy of Family Medicine. All rights reserved.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background: The role of family medicine specializing in primary care is important. This study examined medical students’ perception of family medicine and their career choice, and provides policy and educational implications for family medicine.
Methods: The study used data collected from the 111 medical students from Keimyung University. The questionnaire comprised items pertaining to respondents’ demographic information, career plan, and perceptions about family medicine.
Results: The most common mode of learning about family medicine was class or clinical practice (68.5%). Further, 73 students (65.8%) reported an intention to select family medicine as their major. These students were most likely to be employed (34 persons). Among the 111 students, 3 (2.8%) choose family medicine as their preferred major. Before receiving clinical practice experience, the most common reason for not choosing family medicine was “does not fit into the reality in Korea” (32.1%). After clinical practice, “lack of professionalism” (44.6%) was the most commonly cited reason.
Conclusion: Medical students’ perception about family medicine was strongly influenced by their experiences during class and clinical practice. Students also reported the need to improve professionalism in family medicine. Building public relations could help improve medical students’ awareness about family medicine, and it is also necessary to improve social awareness of family medicine through the support of government such as th family doctor system.
Keywords: Career Choice; Family Medicine; Medical Students; Perception; Surveys and Questionnaires
References
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