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Influencing Factors on Choosing Psychiatry as a Career: An Exploration in Chinese University Students

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Abstract

There is a consistent need of psychiatric professionals in the world including China, and a consistent challenge to recruit more medical students into the psychiatric careers. We aimed to look for factors which have an impact on career-choosing of psychiatry in Chinese university students. We invited 508 non-medical students (NM), 304 medical students without (MO) and 123 medical students with clinical internship experience (MW), to answer a matrix of 43 questions regarding factors influencing career-choosing of psychiatry. Answers to these questions were analyzed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, once the latent factors were identified and structurally-validated, their mean scores in three groups of students were calculated. Five factors with five items each were identified, namely social status inferiority, career importance, practice reward, career preference, and practice stress. NM scored lower than MO and MW did on Social Status Inferiority; NM group scored higher than MO and MW groups did on Career Importance; MW scored lower than NM and MO did on Practice Reward and on Career Preference; Regarding Practice Stress, NM scored higher than MO did, who then in turn, scored higher than MW did. In addition, Practice Stress was positively correlated with advice of the medical educators; and Social Status Inferiority and Career Preference were positively correlated with the psychiatry teaching of the medical educators. Raising career rewards, improving social status, and reinforcing psychiatric education might help to recruit more medical students to specialize in psychiatry practicing.

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Authors’ contributions

Wei Wang carried out the study concept and design. Jiawei Zhong, Luna Zheng, Xiaoling Chen, Qianqian Gao, and Bingren Zhang participated in the acquisition of data. Jiawei Zhong, Luna Zheng, and Xiaoling Chen participated in the analysis and interpretation of data. Jiawei Zhong, Luna Zheng, Xiaoling Chen and Wei Wang wrote the draft of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry/School of Public Health, Zhejiang University College of Medicine, Yuhangtang Road 866, Hangzhou, 310058, Zhejiang, China

    Jiawei Zhong, Luna Zheng, Xiaoling Chen, Qianqian Gao, Bingren Zhang & Wei Wang

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  1. Jiawei Zhong
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  2. Luna Zheng
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  3. Xiaoling Chen
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  4. Qianqian Gao
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  5. Bingren Zhang
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  6. Wei Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wei Wang.

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Funding

This study was funded by a Grant from the 2013 Exploratory Experiments of Public Health for Undergraduates of Zhejiang University to JZ.

Conflict of Interest

Regarding research work described in the paper, each one of our co-authors, JZ, LZ, XC, QG, BZ, and WW, declares that there is no competing interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Zhong, J., Zheng, L., Chen, X. et al. Influencing Factors on Choosing Psychiatry as a Career: An Exploration in Chinese University Students. Psychiatr Q 87, 739–748 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-016-9427-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-016-9427-1

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