career goals in medicine essay

career goals in medicine essay

Exploring and Achieving Career Goals in Medicine: An In-Depth Analysis

1. Introduction to Career Goals in Medicine

The results of this study suggest that a variety of career options are feasible. However, it is only when there is agreement between interests and capabilities with the requirements of a specific job that success is predicted for the MD/Ph.D. career. Establishing successful career goals in medicine involves careful self-assessment on the part of the student, and being informed about the labor market, and the required skills at any chosen career destination. Attending medical school can have a variety of outcomes. Many students make decisions about their future only after gaining experiences with patient care or exposure to research during medical school. For others, summers provide the correct time frame for fostering interests in either thesis-related research or financial rewards from medicine, residency or other desirable work. Overall, the students’ desire to be academically challenged will always remain. It can be anticipated that the setting for this academic challenge will be highly variable depending on the students’ career choice.

Career goals are important sources of motivation for individuals who are in training preparation for their careers. Career goals in medicine include obtaining specific clinical skills, conducting research, teaching, and counseling patients and families concerning medical treatment and diagnosis. Several studies leading to a career in medicine were investigated. Hobbs found that approximately twenty percent of the entering medical students in 1991 intended to practice in primary care initially. Ambitious students stated they had goals of doing well and after residency having a successful practice. Outstanding students expressed interest in teaching, caring for a wide variety of patients, attending top-quality patients, and conducting research. Keely and Goldman also investigated career goals establishing a research interest outside of medical practice, patient contact, diversity, prestige, lifestyle, committing to a long-term career. In a final analysis, it was found that individuals have diverse career goals.

2. Understanding the Importance of Setting Clear Career Goals in the Medical Field

Finally, the findings from this study presented the viewpoints of a potentially diverse group of medical professionals on how best to understand, explore, and clarify the process of setting and achieving career goals across career life cycles in medical education and immediate post-graduation periods.

This study also highlighted the importance of understanding and exploring medical students’ anticipated career paths and their perceived professional role transitions during post-secondary education and immediately after and how they believed undergraduate medical education curricula might facilitate their career goal negotiation and career life cycle change. Study participants reported fostering intended career goals until learning outcome and career resource negotiation occurred, but they were unsure about the currently illuminated challenges and the extent of personal workplace fit. They voiced the challenges they felt in setting S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) goals.

However, findings from the study revealed that medical students, on the other hand, felt overwhelmed by the intense didactic component of training and were concerned about data volume retention, the lack of life balance, and the overhaul of their pre-professional selves in order to function effectively in their post-professional environment. They contended with setting clearly defined career goals and recognized the need for socialization and professional culture immersion strategies to help them effectively achieve their career goals and integrate with workplace demands.

Furthermore, within the medical field, researchers noted that the lack of informed career goal setting, goal negotiation, and overall career goal pursuit by medical professionals results in early career disillusionment and the inability to meet the various career satisfaction and career success needs of health professionals. They went on to emphasize the importance of health professionals’ awareness of their career needs, career interests, and their achievement of career goals over time in the various stages of the career life cycle in the field of medicine.

Research findings have consistently highlighted the importance of setting clear career goals and having a career action plan in order to achieve career success and satisfaction in one’s given career over time. It is believed that this is largely due to the motivational impetus that setting clearly defined career goals provides an individual in following through with the provision of action steps to achieve his or her career goals over time. As such, setting clear career goals has been associated with the attainment and realization of positive career outcomes.

3. Strategies for Setting and Achieving Career Goals in Medicine

Career goal setting is a lifelong dynamic process. The knowledge of certain traits of individuals, such as interests and motivations, including the development of a strong professional identity and having a goal-directed concept of maturity, can assist in career goal achievement. In this section, we summarize the evidence of linking successful career development to individual learning techniques, and to the exploration of personality characteristics, goals, and interests using self-assessment techniques. We explore specific needs along a career development process and offer general planning strategies and techniques for addressing these needs. It is necessary for a roadmap for attaining career success to be included in the medical educational process. In this article, we explore the proposed stages of the developmental student ergonomic approach to becoming an expert. We discuss specific needs, planning strategies, and techniques for successfully addressing the competitive educational process of becoming a physician.

The complex tasks of setting and achieving career goals in medicine are highly underemphasized in traditional medical training. In fact, in his proposed reforms to the medical education system in the United Kingdom, Tooke recognized the need for improvement in career goal setting and advancement in order to improve job satisfaction in medicine. The application of specific strategies tailored to identified stages along the career goal setting and achievement process would improve job satisfaction and well-being in medicine. We define the steps of the developmental student ergonomic approach to becoming an expert as a set of tactics to reinforce the rule of congruence in the training process.

4. Overcoming Challenges and Obstacles on the Path to Achieving Career Goals in Medicine

Failure is a major concern as medical school and professional identity are consistent sources of anxiety. Many students fear they will not match into their top-choice residency; not passing the USMLE Step 1 may torpedo the chances to match into a residency at all. Some students may learn they have been academically dismissed and must retake exams before they can progress to the next phase of their training. Performance on the USMLE is critical because these test scores are high-stakes components of residency application, especially for international medical graduates. Residents who cannot make the training time limits may also be dismissed from their programs, which can have major implications for their careers. There is also public scrutiny of medical quality, and some patients will not survive despite a student’s or physician’s best effort. These circumstances are minor tragedies for the caregivers involved, who live every decision and its consequences. They will replay these decisions over in their minds and continue to generate worst-case scenarios within their thoughts until they have dismantled their communication technique or their clinical performance.

Medical students and physicians encounter a variety of challenges and obstacles on their respective journeys through medical school and their careers. Students must adjust to new challenges presented at each stage of training, build new social support networks while transitioning to new locations, and manage advancing debt. As they move into their careers, residents and physicians still struggle to balance personal and professional responsibilities. Students may face academic challenges, navigate friendships, romantic and family relationships, and confront existential self-doubt and weather crisis of confidence. Many students feel that they are ill-prepared to counsel those they care for, and insecurity about their technical abilities drives anxiety. The high-stress environment of medical school tends to exacerbate preexisting vulnerabilities and trigger self-destructive behaviors.

5. Conclusion: The Impact of Achieving Career Goals in Medicine

This second stage of development, in which physicians define their career expectations, occurs during medical school when, in selecting specialties, they employ a decision guide that is both more detailed and more accurate in predicting compatibility between person and discipline. The best decision guide is one that is based upon sequential multidimensional activities. The decision process follows the traditional health science methodology: train with increasing intensity and increasing skill and increasing commitment to synthesis. This advice can be given to medical students who are still at a late stage of educational activity: students who are exploring clinical problems and learning to appreciate their own ways of dealing with stress, responsibility, and continuing education. These students can learn the most from professors who themselves are grappling with the complexities involved in modulating clinical work with professional and educational roles of their own.

Achieving career goals in medicine is extremely important. When physicians choose a specialty or area of accomplishment, they often do not realize the depth and impact of their decision. The specialty or area of accomplishment chosen significantly influences the design, performance, and satisfaction of the physician’s future professional, public, and private life. Physicians wanting to be satisfied and successful in pursuing their profession need to thoroughly understand both their personal needs and the opportunities in specialty areas, and our society needs to understand and accept the need for an appropriate fit between professionally trained healthcare resources and societal health needs.