4.2 Factors influencing perception of a career in CT surgery
The ability to actively influence patients’ lives as well as
intellectual challenge are predominant reasons supporting selection of
CT surgery careers. Respondents with a declared interest in the
specialty have different established interests than non-interested
participants with the former allocating more value to research
opportunities and new technological procedures (13). Nonetheless,
various dissuading factors persist, mainly in concern to the difficulty
and length of training and work-like balance (5) as well as the
personality of CT surgeons (20) and limited opportunities (5,12).
Interestingly, a history of previous scandals in the field was not
influential on the perception of CT surgery as a prospective career.
Such decision-making elements should all be considered in the design of
exposure programmes and recruitment schemes in order to provide a
realistic portrayal of the surgical area and encourage fruitful and
inspiring interactions between trainees and consultants already in the
specialty and more junior members.
The overall perspective of CT surgery relates to its surgical
emergency-heavy nature, but it is not solely constituted of trauma and
emergency patients. CT surgeon-orientated programmes should be focused
on offering practice patterns of surgeons to better inform students on
lifestyle. Enabling students to envision these challenges is essential
for a balanced representation of the career without any concealment or
misinformation (13). With core surgical trainees frequently holding a
common interest in both CT surgery and vascular surgery, given the
similar patient cases and vascular work, an exploration into the
benefits of promoting these two specialties together may provide
valuable insight (3).
Another noticeable discrepancy is the significant difference in interest
between men and women, with men being more interested in CT surgery than
women. In all studies and at all levels of study, interest in a CT
career has been higher in men than in women. Despite the varying degree
of this difference from one study to another, the extent of this
disparity was generally reported to be lower in less advanced stages of
training such as premedical and preclinical students, yet still evident
just the same. Proposed explanations for this phenomenon include the
difficulty to maintain a work-life balance especially in family planning
as well as the difficulty of taking maternity leave during training or
post-training and re-entering the specialty (21). Such deterring factors
may be addressed through the introduction of more female cardiothoracic
surgery mentors and family planning incentives such as less-than-full
time training options (13).