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46 Making General Practice Attractive: Encouraging GP attraction and Retention KCE Reports 90
FINANCIAL ASPECTS AND CAREER OPPORTUNITIES: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GP
STUDENTS AND OTHER STUDENTS
Both cohorts attach an importance to ‘a good salary’ but candidate specialists seem to
attach more importance to ‘regular salary increases’ than future GP’s.
Moreover, there is a statistically significant difference between both groups of students
with respect to professional prospects. The value attached to ‘Career opportunities’ has
the strongest association (0.263) with the specialty choice (higher for future specialists).
PRESTIGE: LESS IMPORTANT
Prestige does not seem to be very important for the students although a statistically
significant difference can be found for both groups of students. Students choosing to
specialize in family medicine/general practice are more oriented towards ‘not important’
whereas students choosing another specialty tend to value it as more ‘important’.
INTERESTING WORK
All students report that having interesting work is the most valued in their future
professional life. It has the highest score in both groups (5.6 and 5.5). There is a
statistically significant difference between both students groups for the values
‘developing new skills and acquiring knowledge’ and ‘a good reward’ (the total of
financial and social rewards): the group specializing in family medicine/general practice
seems to value less both items.
GP STUDENTS VALUE MORE FLEXIBILITY THAN JOB SECURITY
An important item is that GP students value more ‘Flexible working hours’ than ‘Job
security’. The specialist group values ‘Job security’ more than ‘Flexible working hours’.
Controlled for gender and university effects only the three strongest effects remain
statistically significant i.e., ‘Career opportunities’, ‘Prestigious job designation’ and
‘Flexible working hours’. s
OTHER VALUES FOR THE FUTURE PROFESSIONAL LIFE
All students value other psychosocial job characteristics such as 'Nice colleagues', Good
working relationship with colleagues', 'Being accepted by others' and working conditions
as' free days and holidays considerably. After controlling for gender and university
effects, the relationship between ‘being accepted by others’ and specialty choice
becomes statistically significant (odds ratio 3.213 [95% CI (1,048-9,847)] for choosing
family medicine/general practice).
‘Openness and honesty between colleagues’, ‘Pleasant working conditions’, ‘Developing
self-respect’ and ‘Developing friendships’ seem to be valued equally by all the students
as shown by nil effect size.
3.6.1.3 Motivation to choose medicine
Table 5 displays some associations with the choice of GP or other specialty.
s
The answering categories of the different future values were dichotomised. E.g. Totally unimportant, very
unimportant and quite unimportant became ‘unimportant’; quite important, very important and totally
important became ‘important’.