Background: Medical training occurs during peak childbearing years for most medical students. Many factors influence specialty selection. The aim of this study was to determine whether being a parent affects specialty choice among United States medical students in 2020.Methods: The authors performed a multicenter web-based survey study of medical students enrolled in Oregon Health and Science University, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, and University of Michigan Medical School. The 22-item instrument assessed parenthood status, specialty preference, specialty perceptions, and factors influencing specialty choice.Results: 537 out of 2236 (24.0%) students responded. Among respondents, 59 (10.9%) were current or expecting parents. The majority (359, 66.8%) were female and 24-35 years old (430, 80.1%). Of the students who were parents or expecting, 30 (50.9%) were female, and the majority (55, 93.2%) were partnered. Top specialties preferred by both groups were family medicine, emergency medicine, obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN), internal medicine, psychiatry, and pediatrics. Specialties rated most family-friendly included family medicine, dermatology, pediatrics, psychiatry, radiology, emergency medicine and pathology. The specialties rated least family-friendly were surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, plastic surgery, and OB/GYN. These rankings were the same between groups. Passion for the field, culture of the specialty, and quality of life were the top three factors students considered when choosing a specialty. Being a parent or future parent ranked more highly for parents than non-parents, but was not in the top three factors for either group.Conclusions: Parental status did not affect specialty choices of medical students. While being a parent was considered more heavily by current student parents than non-parents, this was not weighed as heavily as passion for the field, culture of the specialty and quality of life. Medical school training and simultaneous parenting is daunting, yet student parents are putting their passion first when making a career choice.

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Objectives To evaluate among parents of infants and toddlers the agreement between parental report and the Bristol Stool Scale (BSS) in assessing stool consistency and the effect of both methods on determining the prevalence of functional constipation (FC) according to the Rome III criteria.Study design Parents of children ≤48 months of age who were seen for a well-child visit completed a questionnaire about their child's bowel habits during the previous month. Cohen kappa coefficient (k) was used to measure intrarater agreement between parental report of stool consistency ("hard," "normal," "soft/mucous/liquid") and the BSS (types 1-2, hard; types 3-5, normal; types 6-7, loose/liquid). The prevalence of FC was assessed based on the questionnaire according to the Rome III criteria, comparing both methods of stool consistency assessment.Results Parents of 1095 children (median age, 15 months; range, 1-48) were included. Only fair agreement existed between the 2 methods of stool consistency assessment (k = 0.335; P < .001). According to the Rome III criteria, using parental report the prevalence of FC was 20.5% and using the BSS the prevalence was 20.9% (P = .87). The agreement between these 2 methods for assessing the prevalence of FC was excellent (k = 0.95; P < .001).Conclusions Only fair agreement exists between the BSS and parental report of stool consistency among parents of infants and toddlers. Different methods of stool consistency assessment did not result in a difference in the prevalence of FC.