Background Medical specialization is an understudied, yet growing aspect of health systems in low- and middleincome countries (LMICs). In India, medical specialization is incrementally, yet significantly, modifying service delivery, workforce distribution, and financing. However, scarce evidence exists in India and other LMICs regar...

Specialization in medicine acts to normalize categories of health and sickness that, once constructed, can appear to be obvious and rational divisions of the body, of disease, or of populations. While the earliest work on this topic, George Rosen’s sociologically informed The specialization of medicine (1944), highlighted the role of medical theory in specialty formation, historians of medicine...

BACKGROUND There is a critical shortage of healthcare workers in sub-Saharan Africa, and Malawi has one of the lowest physician densities in the region. One of the reasons for this shortage is inadequate retention of medical school graduates, partly due to the desire for specialization training. The University of Malawi College of Medicine has developed specialty training programs, but medical ...

BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to assess whether medical students' fainting outside the university or while witnessing surgical procedures and/or autopsies influenced their choice of a specialization. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study group consisted of 605 medical students (from fourth to sixth year of study) from five medical universities in Poland (325 women, 212 men and 8 responders of...

BACKGROUND A 60/40 ratio has been estimated as a country's ideal proportion between general practitioners and specialists. In Chile this proportion was 36/ 64 in 2004, exactly the opposite of the ideal. Trends towards specialization or general practice among medical students have not been thoughtfully studied. AIM To assess trends among medical students towards becoming general practitioners ...