motivations influencing the specialty choices of medical school graduates

Background: growing national concern about distortions in the size, specially composition, and availability of the physician workforce - especially after cultural revolution- has evoked challenges in iran. purpose: to determine various factors that influence medical graduates choices for residency program. methods: all applicants for residency program in mazandaran university of medical sciences and health services completed the medical school graduation questionnaire, and rated each factor using 0 to 4 likert-type scale. factors' ratings were also compared across applicants of different residency program, and demographic variables. results: the top two factors rated as having strong influences were ones related to interest in helping people (rated 3.07), and intellectual content of the specially (rated 3). malpractice insurance cost has the least influence (rated 0.98). most of men preferred independence, whereas most of women preferred predictable working hours. opportunity to make differences in people's life influenced the specially choices of usual participants. whereas those who used war veterans quota paid more attention to independence and exercise of social responsibility. patient contact factors were less important to graduates who chose diagnostic specialties. also, there was a significant association between the participants' age and four factors. conclusion: these graduates based their specially preference heavily on the opportunity that the specially affords to help people, and intellectual content of the specially. knowing the hierarchy of influences on graduates' motivations should help education strategists determine what experiences and perceptions must change if a different mix of specially decision is to result.