![]() ![]() In 2012, the total number of ophthalmologists in China was 28,338 (20 ophthalmologists per 100 000 people) and only 36% of the ophthalmologists can perform surgery. Third, China has a shortage of skilled ophthalmologists. Second, China has a rapidly aging population. Almost 500 counties in China lack eye care services or an ophthalmologist. First, China has a large rural population with limited accessibility and affordability of eye care services. Several possible reasons exist for the large avoidable population with blindness in China. China’s cataract surgery rate is even lower than that of neighboring countries like India (5,600) and Vietnam (1,900). The CSR in China is significantly lower at 1,067. In developed countries (such as the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan) where avoidable causes of blindness are less common, the CSR ranges from 4,000 to 10,000. Cataract surgical rate (CSR) is defined as the number of cataract operations performed per million people in 1 year and is used as a proxy indicator of access to eye care services in a country. Cataract remains the leading cause of blindness among visually impaired people in the world, yet cataract blindness is reversible since surgical intervention can effectively restore visual impairment. With an increasing and aging population in China, the blind population may increase in the future. 32.4 million people were legally blind in 2010 globally 17% of them lived in China. Vision impairment is a leading and largely preventable cause of disability worldwide. Ophthalmology is the fifth ranked choice among clinical medicine students. Medical students in China have numerous factors that motivate their choice in a specialty. 1.5% (anesthesia) and 4.5% (oral) of them chose ophthalmology as their top ranked specialty. For anesthesia medicine and oral medicine students, most of them preferred to choose the same specialty as before. 5.6% (five-year) and 3.4% (eight-year) of them choose ophthalmology as their top ranked specialty for their career. About the first career choice of the future specialty, for clinical medicine students, ophthalmology is the fifth ranked choice for clinical medicine students. ![]() When asked about the reasons for choosing a specialty, the top four reasons are the ability to find employment, financial reward, career upward mobility, and professional pressure. When asked about the reasons for choosing to go to medical school, the top four reasons are the ability to help patients, interesting and challenging work, prestige, and job stability. MethodsĪll the students were asked to rate the importance of nine possible factors in choosing a specialty as their vocation and their first ranked future specialty career choice. Participantsįourth-year medical students in the five-year program and sixth-year medical students in the eight-year program. A questionnaire was developed and administered to 450 medical students at the Xiangya Medical College, Central South University in Changsha, China to understand the attitudes among medical students in China toward different medical specialties and to find the factors that influenced their choice of career in ophthalmology. ![]()
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