Factors Affecting Specialty Selection Among Clinical Years' Medical Students at Al- Baha University Faculty of Medicine

Background: Selecting a medical specialty is thought to be one of the most significant choices undergraduate students worldwide must make. Understanding the elements that influence medical students' career decisions is crucial. Objective: To find out what factors Al-Baha University clinical-year medical students consider when making career decisions. Methods: This is a cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey that was carried out among clinical-year medical students at Al-Baha University, Saudi Arabia. A questionnaire was designed using Google Forms platform. The data was collected between April 2024 – May 2024 at the University of Al-Baha. Results: Most of the participants 163(65.5%) thought that the gender of the doctor plays a role in the specialty selection. Factors that influence the choice of specialty include individual characteristics (96%). Type and Nature of the specialty 95.2%, lifestyle (94.4%), and job satisfaction (92.8%). The top selected future specialties by male and female students were medicine, orthopedics, general surgery, dermatology, pediatrics, ophthalmology, family medicine, psychiatry, and emergency medicine. Conclusion: Most of the students selected clinical specialty and internal medicine is the most popular career choice. The most important factors influencing specialty selection were individual characteristics, followed by the type and nature of the specialty, lifestyle, and job satisfaction. We recommend further studies to investigate medical students' career preferences and the factors influencing them in Saudi Arabia.