The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: There has been reported decline in the number of medical graduates pursuing careers in general surgery in Canada and USA.¹,² There is paucity of information on such in Africa. A study by Yusufu, et al showed that General Surgery is the most preferred surgical subspecialty amongst interns at ABUTH, Zaria .³ This study was conducted therefore to describe the pattern of career choice by interns in Nigeria. And to evaluate the choice of specialty by those who want to become surgeons.

Methods: Two Hundred and seventy-one (271) questionnaires were administered to interns at the UCH, Ibadan, UITH, Ilorin, LUTH, Lagos and FMC, Owo between August and December 2003. The questionnaires returned formed the database of the study. Data were analysed by using ratio and percentages

Results: Of the 224 respondents – 93.8 % want to pursue postgraduate training. Surgery was the choice of 30.5%, followed by internal medicine (20.0%), obstetrics and gynaecology (13%), paediatrics (12.4%) etc. Of those who want to be surgeons, 7.8 % choose to be general surgeons (including surgical oncology) , compared with 28.1 % for orthopaedics/trauma and 25.0 % for cardiac/thoracic surgery. Leading reasons why interns do not opt for a career in surgery include stressful training and training not accommodating future/family plans.