A National Sample Survey of Medical Students about Their Perception and Evaluation on Medical Study, Career Plan, and Medical Care System: Part 1. Survey Methods and Characteristics of Sample

Park, Jung Han; Kim, Kyung Hwan; Jun, Hae Ri; Lee, Ju Young

Abstract

Since the first survey done in 1983, this is the second national sample survey of medical students about their perception and evaluation on medical study, career plan, and medical care system. One out of every 10 students plus one in each class were systematically sampled from each grade year of 32 medical schools in Korea that had students from freshman to senior in November 1997. A questionnaire was developed by adding items related with recent changes in medical care environment and with viewpoint on medicine and physician as an occupation to the questionnaire used in 1983. The questionnaire was administered at each school under the supervision of designated collaborator of the same school in December 1997 through January 1998. A total of 1,386 students were sampled from a total of 11,987 medical students and 1,233 students(89.0%) filled out the questionnaire. Twelve students were excluded from the analysis because of incomplete response and the final analysis was done for 1,221 students. A few demographic characteristics of the sample were compared with those of the study population to check the representativeness of the sample and found no skew. The contents of the study were divided into three parts and the first part describes the study methods, demographic and other characteristics of the sample, students' viewpoint on medical education, and students' aptitude for medicine Male students accounted for 75.7% of the sample. The proportion of students who entered medical school right after graduating from a high school was 45.8% in Seoul and 53.4% in other than Seoul area. The students who classified their own political inclination conservative were 43.9% in Seoul and 33.0% in other than Seoul and the percentage of students with progressive inclination was higher in out of Seoul than Seoul area. The proportion of students who have a religion was 57.2%; Christian 31.0%, Catholic 15.2%, and Buddhist 9.5%. The educational level of fathers of students was far higher than the level of general population, e.g. 59.8% had college or higher education. Occupation of fathers was mainly white-collar worker; professional worker 21.2%, company employee 17.2%, government official 13.1%, manager 11.8%, and medical professional 8.7%. In the decision-making process to enter the medical school, 53.7% of the students were influenced by someone else and 62.1% of them were parents. Socio-economic factor was the most common reason for recommending medical school and it accounted 33.5% of the reasons. Medical students enjoy learning life phenomenon(47.2%) and human being(44.3%) in medical study but most disturbing factors are memory work(39.7%) and too much to study(34.1%). If students were given another chance to choose a college as a senior student in high school, 50.3% of them said that they would choose medical school. Only 6% of students have intention to change their major subject of study if they are allowed to change now. The proportion of students who consider their scholastic aptitude is compatible with medical study was 64.9% and such proportion increased with grade. The percentage of students who are going to recommend medical school to their own son in the future was 36.6% for male and 26.7% for female students and to their own daughter 33.6% and 27.7%, respectively.