Specialty choice and educational experiences among medical students in Lithuania: a cross-sectional study

Understanding medical students’ perspectives is important for improving medical education and student well-being. This cross-sectional study examined medical education from the student perspective by describing motivations, concerns, perceived study difficulty, and satisfaction across Lithuania’s medical schools. An anonymous online survey was distributed via university email to medical students in all study years (1–6) at Vilnius University and the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, available in Lithuanian and English. The self-developed questionnaire covered demographics, motivations, and concerns related to studying medicine (rated on 5-point scales), single-item measures of perceived study difficulty and satisfaction (10-point scales), family medical background, and age at the decision to pursue medicine. Group differences were examined with independent-samples t-tests (Cohen’s d) and associations among motivations, concerns, and the two outcomes were assessed with Pearson correlations. A total of 864 students completed the survey (response rate ~ 9%; mean age 21.97 ± 2.73 years; 78.3% female). Most students (60.1%) reported being happy and satisfied with studying medicine; mean perceived difficulty was 7.32 ± 1.64 and mean satisfaction was 6.09 ± 2.21. Female students reported somewhat higher perceived difficulty than male students, while satisfaction did not differ by gender. Satisfaction was lower among students in years 4–6 than in years 1–3, and international students reported lower perceived difficulty and higher satisfaction than Lithuanian students. The desire to help others had the highest motivation score and showed a modest positive correlation with satisfaction, while concern about grades had the highest concern score and the strongest positive correlation with perceived difficulty; most other associations were weak. Intrinsic and prosocial motivations, especially the desire to help others, were associated with higher satisfaction with medical studies, whereas concerns about academic performance were associated with greater perceived study difficulty. Differences by study year and between domestic and international students suggest that medical education and support strategies should be tailored to diverse student groups and training stages. These exploratory, cross-sectional findings based on a self-developed questionnaire highlight areas for future research using validated measures and more advanced analytical designs.