What Motivates [or not] Medical Students to Choose Emergency Medicine as Their Specialty?

Aims: Since 2017, emergency medicine is a full specialty in France. In 2018, 21 positions were left vacant at the internship in emergency medicine. We wanted to study the reasons why or not students want to choose emergency medicine, as well as their motivation for this specialty. Procedure: We conducted a prospective and monocentric observational study. All undergraduate medical students at the Strasbourg Faculty of Medicine were contacted between 2017 and 2018. Self-administered questionnaires were sent to collect the type of specialization being considered, the respondents' degree of motivation to become an emergency physician and the influence of various motivational factors on their willingness or not to choose emergency medicine as a specialty. Results: Seven percent of first-year medical students want to choose emergency medicine as their specialty. They are now only one percent at the end of their undergraduate studies. Lifestyle is increasingly seen between the beginning and end of undergraduate studies as particularly dissuasive. The variety of the situations encountered and the intellectual challenge are attractive and stable factors. Conclusion: The attractiveness of emergency medicine could be enhanced by communicating with undergraduate medical students about motivating factors and by continuing to think about how to improve the quality of life of emergency physicians.