Factors Influencing the Choice of Anesthesia as a Career by Undergraduates of the University of Rwanda

BACKGROUND: Rwanda currently faces a severe shortage of trained medical personnel, including physician anesthesiologists. The recruitment of residents into the anesthesia program has been consistently low. This study aimed at determining the factors that influence undergraduates' decision to pursue anesthesia as a career choice. METHODS: A questionnaire was created and administered to final year undergraduate medical students at the University of Rwanda. The questionnaire was created based on factors identified from literature review and key informant interviews. The questionnaire was translated, field-tested, and refined. The final survey questionnaire contains 27 4-point Likert scale items and 4 free-text questions. RESULTS: Seventy-nine final year undergraduate medical students responded to the survey. Only 2 students (2.5%) chose anesthesia as their top choice for postgraduate training. The most frequently named factors for not choosing anesthesiology were long work hours and high stress level, insufficient mentorship, and low job opportunity. CONCLUSIONS: The issues identified by our survey must be considered when making efforts toward increasing anesthesia recruitment in Rwanda. Factors such as lack of material resources and high workload will not be easily addressed. Others can be addressed through changes in medical student anesthesiology rotations and better mentorship by anesthesiologists during formative years. Focusing on factors that can be changed now may increase enrollment into anesthesiology. Future studies will include broadening the survey population and further investigating the influencing factors elucidated by this study.