Abstract
Recently, the number of young doctors choosing to become surgeons has declined, because of the deterioration of the image of surgeons among medical students. In order to clarify the differences in the image of a surgeon between surgeons and medical students, we made a questionnaire survey that we gave to surgeons of Oita Prefecture and medical students of the Faculty of Medicine, at Oita University. The contents of the questionnaire form included, image of surgeons, image of surgeon's career and surgical education, and image of “rewarding job of a surgeon”, with a total of 49 questions. We received replies from 260 medical students out of 286 (response rate was 91%) and 213 surgeons out of 232 (response rate was 93%) who completed the questionnaire form.
Compared to surgeons, medical students felt that surgeons have potential, but also they thought that surgeons had a poor working environment and surgeon's own job satisfaction was low. It is thought that an improvement in surgeon's working environment and teaching medical students about the rewards of surgery through student education will lead to an increase in the number of surgeons.
