Educational and professional motives peculiarities among first-year medical university students, studying with different financial capabilities.

Abstract

This article examines the educational and professional motives peculiarities of first-year medical university students studying with different financial capabilities (publicly-funded, employer-sponsored education, and commercial training). Based on the questionnaires "Methodology of teaching pedagogical university students" (S.A. Pakulina, S.M. Ketko) and "Motivation for choosing a medical profession" (A.P. Vasilkova), as well as mathematical and statistical processing and obtained data interpretation, the author concludes that there is general and specific peculiarities of the studied phenomenon in the selected groups of students. Common features in the dominant motives section for choosing a profession include a set of internal motives (interest in the profession, wish to heal people, alleviate the severely ill and elderly people's and children's suffering, taking care of their own health and the health of their loved ones), as well as external motives (the need to solve scientific medical problems). In the section of actually working educational and professional activity motives, the external competitive motive ("keep up with fellow students") is the structure-forming motive in all three subjects categories? as well as receiving rewards motive ("to achieve the respect of teachers"). Among the professional motives of all respondents, the leading ones are internal motives for self-realization, self-improvement, and getting an interesting job, combined with external motives for achieving social recognition, respect, and guaranteed financial stability, including through starting a business. The specific educational and professional motives features are due to differences in the correlation relationships within each of the sections, which complement and clarify the general motivational aspirations of first-year male and female students. General and specific features generalization allowed the author to compose "motivational portraits" of three students groups and characterize them as "motivation of the prestigious-due” among students on a publicly-funded basis, "quasi-professional motivation" — among students studying in the employer-sponsored education direction; "Utilitarian motivation" — among students studying on a paid-for basis. The portrait's content suggests that employer-sponsored and paid-for education is more valuable for future doctors, especially in terms of understanding their professional future trajectory. The publicly-funded students' motivation has a more pronounced consumer gradation since it is not associated with the financial conditions of education and contractual obligations in relation to third parties — medical institutions and organizations.

Features of the first-year students’ lifestyle at the faculty of medicine: an observational study

“…Among the reasons hindering to keep a healthy lifestyle, according to the students, the key factor is their high workload with studies/work. At the same time, the occurrence of such circumstances that impede a healthy lifestyle, such as laziness, lack of motivation, lack of financial resources, physical inactivity, among our students is found to be somewhat lower than in the papers of other researchers [5,12,15].…”

“…Our study has shown that a little more than a third of the respondents consider their lifestyle to be healthy. When comparing the results of self-assessment of lifestyle by the medical students, obtained by us, with the data of other authors, it is noteworthy that approximately the same number of students consider their lifestyle to be healthy [5,12,13,15,17]. Among the reasons hindering to keep a healthy lifestyle, according to the students, the key factor is their high workload with studies/work.…”

“…Educational institutions can make an invaluable contribution to strengthening the health of students and promoting a healthy lifestyle (HLS) in them [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Of particular interest is the preservation of the health and labor potential in medical students, whose specific educational and occupational pathways places high demands on their health [12,13,14]. The contradiction lies in the fact that an imbalance between the intensity of training loads and their free time can lead to the formation of behavioral habits with an expected negative impact on their health [15,16,17].…”