Background: Medical students are the source of a country's surgeons. There are concerns regarding a possible decline in the proportion of students choosing surgery as a career in some developing countries.
Objective: To identify the level of interest in surgical careers and the factors influence a student's interest in pursuing a surgical career in Sudan.
Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in September 2013 at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Medical Sciences and Technology, Khartoum, Sudan. A self administered questionnaire was distributed to 887 male and female students, (from first to fifth academic years) recruited in the study.
Results: Response rate was 73% with 647 questionnaires were collected, out of 887 medical students. Of the returned questionnaires, 604 were valid. Most of the students have decided upon a specialty 541 (89.6%) while 63 (10.4%) did not. Two hundred (36.9%) out of the 541 respondents stated that surgery is their choice for specialty. General Surgery was the popular surgical specialty (48%), followed by Cardiothoracic Surgery (16.5%), Neurosurgery (11%) and Orthopedics (10.5%). Compared with students interested in a career in other medical specialties, those interested in surgery were younger (Pre-clerkship students).
Conclusion: Surgery is the most popular choice of postgraduate training by medical students. Fewer than half of the medical students who choose surgery were willing to consider general surgery as a future career choice. Financial reasons and advice from of others were considered by many students as important factors to select surgery.
Keywords: Career choice; medical students; surgical specialties.