ENT- a Dwindling Specialty Choice among the Medical Student at Undergraduate Level in a Developing Country

Objectives: Document the frequency of ENT specialty choice being taken by third and fourth-year Medical students. Introduction: The field of ENT specialty is a very competitive field all over the world. The field of ENT gives a more controllable lifestyle as compared to General Surgery. Despite otolaryngology being an important specialty and being more flexible, with a controllable lifestyle; the importance given to it is decreasing all over the world in undergraduate teaching. In UK the time given to ENT teaching is 3.4 days of pre-clinical teaching plus 5.0 days of ENT departmental experience. Materials & Methods: This is a cross-sectional survey study. Answers were marked on a likert scale of 5; as strongly agree, agree, not sure, disagree, strongly disagree. Results: Total of 167 students participated in the survey. Ninety-eight students in the third year and Sixty-nine students in the fourth year. For the question regarding taking up ENT as a career choice 13% strongly agreed. 20% agreed and 46% were not sure about this question. Conclusion: ENT is losing its ground as the most sought after choices in the post-graduation. This is evident even in the undergraduate level; the graduates are not sure whether they want to pick up ENT as their final career choice.