When and why do medical students drop out of extracurricular longitudinal general practice tracks? A cross-sectional study from two German medical faculties

Objectives To explore when and why undergraduate medical students drop out of longitudinal extracurricular general practice (GP) tracks and to describe their future career plans. Design Cross-sectional online survey and descriptive analysis of routine data. Setting GP tracks at two German medical faculties, data collection took place between September 2020 and April 2021. Participants Of 111 students who had taken part in one of the two GP tracks and dropped out prematurely, 101 were contactable via email. Overall, the response rate was 72.3% with 73 completed questionnaires and 75.3% of the participants were female. Primary and secondary outcome measures Reasons for leaving the GP track (closed and free-text answers), attitudes towards a career in GP and future career plans. Results Students left the tracks predominantly during the first 2years of study. Students most frequently stated that structural reasons such as the distance to the GP teaching practice (74.2%), interest in another medical discipline (66.1%), private reasons (58.1%) and the GP mentor (53.1%) influenced their decision to drop out. However, 87.1% of the students indicated that their exit could not have been prevented by the project administration. Conclusions Reasons for dropping out differ between GP tracks and not all reasons are within reach of programme design and staff. Addressable issues include student selection with regard to career plans, support and strengthening of student-mentor relationships, the location of GP practices, and/or travel and accommodation support.

Automated summary

This study aims to explore the reasons and future career plans of undergraduate medical students who drop out of longitudinal extracurricular general practice (GP) tracks. The results showed that students predominantly leave the tracks during the first 2 years, citing reasons such as distance to GP teaching practice, interest in other medical disciplines, personal reasons, and mentorship as influencing factors. However, the majority of students indicated that their exit could not have been prevented by project administration.