Attitude of Interns towards Family Medicine as a Career in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Introduction: Family medicine is a relatively overlooked specialty in Nepalese medical education. It is unclear how many interns are actually interested in Family medicine as a career and how many non-medical individuals are aware of its existence. The aim of this study is to assess information, expectation and perception among interns regarding family medicine and its choice as a career. Methods: This is a descriptive-cross sectional study carried out in Kathmandu Medical College Teaching Hospital from July 2018 to December 2018. Whole sampling was done. All interns of Kathmandu Medical College Teaching Hospital posted in different departments during the time period was the inclusion criteria. Chronic absentees was the exclusion criteria. Factor like age, sex, their residency of choice, and whether they consider family medicine as a potential career were considered. Data was entered in with Statistical Package for Social Services version 16 and necessary calculations were done. Results: Thirty three interns preferred internal medicine as their career of choice, 20 preferred surgery while only three preferred in family medicine. Eighty eight interns, including the three who had family medicine as their career of choice, said that they could consider family medicine as a potential career. Eighty eight out of the 100 interns in the study mentioned that their family had knowledge that a specialty called family medicine existed. Conclusions: Despite being the career of choice of only a few, majority considered family medicine as a potential career for them. And the knowledge about existence of family medicine was high among families of interns.