Career Choices and Determining Factors Among Final Year Medical Students in Lagos, Nigeria

The decisions that medical students make regarding their career paths have a direct effect on the future medical workforce of a country. Their choice of specialty determines the distribution of their country’s medical workforce among different specialties and its ability to deliver specialized healthcare services.

The location of a medical student’s residency training is one of the most significant decisions they will make. This decision often foreshadows their career prospects, and the majority of students indicate the desire to train abroad. In Nigeria, there is already an alarming rate of brain drain among medical doctors and other healthcare professionals. It is important to begin to understand the factors that influence students’ choice to leave the country so that measures can be taken by policymakers to mitigate the negative impacts of a lean, skewed, and under-specialized workforce.