Perception of final year medical students about the choice of medical microbiology as a speciality

Background: In Nigeria and many other countries, many specialties had problems with recruitment of medical teachers outside the core clinical departments.Objective: We aim at determining the factors that influence the choice of medical microbiology as a speciality among final year medical students in University of Maiduguri, College of Health Sciences.Methodology: The study was a descriptive cross-sectional study. Data was obtained using a structured questionnaire that was administered among to the 2013/2014 session final year medical students of University of Maiduguri. Results were analysed using the SPSS, version 16.0.Results: All the 134 final year medical students responded to the questionnaire, out of whom 91(68%) were males. A total of 115 (86%) of the students would want to specialise after school and only 6 (4%) would choose a career in medical microbiology.Conclusion: Majority of the students believed it was necessary to specialize. However, only 4% of the students choose medical microbiology as a career. The North-East geo-political zone of Nigeria may suffer shortage of trained medical microbiologists if career orientation and mentor-mentee relationships are not strengthened.Keywords: Career choice, male, reasons for specialization, University of Maidugur