Influences on Malaysian Pharmacy students’ career preferences

<p>Objectives. To identify and evaluate factors affecting the career preferences of fourth-year bachelor ofpharmacy (BPharm) students in Malaysia in the presence of a 4-year period of mandatory governmentservice.Methods. A validated self-administered questionnaire was used in this cross-sectional study to collectdata from final-year BPharm students enrolled at 3 government-funded universities and 1 privateuniversity in Malaysia. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis.Results. Three hundred fourteen students responded (213 from public universities and 101 from theprivate university). Approximately 32% of public university students and 37% of private universitystudents ranked their own interest in pharmacy as the reason for undertaking pharmacy degree studies;40.4% of public and 19.8% of private university respondents stated that they would enter a nonpharmacy-relatedcareer upon graduation if given the choice. Public university students ranked hospitalpharmacy as their choice of first career setting (4.39, p 5 0.001), while private students rankedcommunity pharmacy first (4.1, p 5 0.002). On a scale of 1 to 5, salary received the highest meanscore (3.9 and 4.0, p 5 0.854) as the extrinsic factor most influencing their career choice.Conclusions. Final-year students at Malaysian public universities were most interested in hospitalpharmacy practice as their first career step upon graduation, while private university students weremost interested in community pharmacy. The top 3 extrinsic factors rated as significant in selectinga career destination were salary, benefits, and geographical location.</p>