Values and interests

We feel that far more useful tools, several of which have been developed in recent years, aim to correlate your values and interests with those provided by a surveyed population of practicing doctors. You are required to respond to a number of questions (e.g “do you prefer to have short or long term relationships with patients”), and your responses are correlated with those of various specialists. Compatibility scores for each specialty are then generated. Examples include the Medical Specialty Preference Inventory and Glaxo Pathway (developed in the USA) and the Sci59 (developed in the UK). The Glaxo Pathway can be completed online and was last updated in 2003. The Sci59 was updated in late 2006 with new survey data and is now available to individuals online for a small fee. You can email oucem@open.ac.uk for more details. The MSPI is not freely available. Unfortunately, a similar tool is yet to be created based on an Australian survey.

The lists generated by these tools should only be seen as a guide and are not prescriptive. However, running through them (or even just reading their question lists) should get you thinking about what is important to you and what type of job will bring you the greatest satisfaction.

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