Exploring Career Guidance Needs and Career Clarity Among Indian Medical Students: A Multicentre Educational Needs Assessment
Raghu YelavarthiBackground
Career development is an important but often under-addressed component of undergraduate medical education. Medical students navigate complex specialty and career decisions, yet structured support remains inconsistently integrated into undergraduate training. This study explored career clarity, awareness of career-support resources, and perceptions of structured career guidance among undergraduate medical students in India.
Methods
A multicentre educational needs assessment used an online cross-sectional survey of 295 undergraduate Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) students from four urban medical colleges in India. The questionnaire explored career clarity, awareness of career-support resources, perceptions of institutional career guidance, and preferences for career support. Descriptive and exploratory inferential analyses were performed. A preliminary framework for staged career support was subsequently developed and appraised by senior medical educators.
Results
Only 53 students (18.0%) reported being very clear about future career options, while awareness of aptitude-assessment resources was limited (22.7%). Most respondents expressed a need for structured institutional career guidance (75.6%), and 89.2% considered such services beneficial. Exploratory ordinal logistic regression showed that higher academic year was associated with greater self-reported career clarity (adjusted odds ratio, 1.16; 95% confidence interval, 1.05–1.28; p<0.01). Support for structured career guidance was high across demographic and educational subgroups. The preliminary India–Seed–Sprout–Sapling (I3S) framework received favourable expert appraisal for educational relevance, conceptual coherence, curriculum alignment, and perceived feasibility.
Conclusion
Many students reported limited career clarity while expressing strong interest in structured career support. The cross-sectional association between academic year and career clarity indicates differences across academic stages; longitudinal studies are required to determine whether career clarity changes within individual students. Structured career-development activities could potentially be integrated within existing undergraduate education structures, including Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) and the Attitude, Ethics and Communication (AETCOM) curriculum. I3S remains a preliminary framework requiring prospective implementation and evaluation before its effectiveness can be established.