Career specialty choice: A combined research-intervention project

This research describes and evaluates a workshop aimed at promoting career specialty choice and examines relationships between measured career specialty interests, work values, and personality type. Three consecutive classes of second-year medical students (N = 161) participated in a two-session specialty choice workshop. All participants in the study rated the usefulness of the workshop and reported their level of specialty choice certainty and satisfaction. They also responded to measures of medical specialty preference, work values, and personality type. Results indicated two distinct student subgroups of career-specialty-decided and -undecided students. The former subgroup evidenced more stability and certainty of specialty choice as well satisfaction with their choice. Both groups of students reported having benefited from the workshop. Significant gender differences in the relationships between scores on a measure of medical specialty preference and scores on measures of work values and personality emerged. Implications are discussed in terms of the differential career counseling needs of students either decided or undecided about their career specialty choices.