ABSTRACT
Introduction:
The choice of specialty is a determining factor in the doctor’s professional practice. Medical specialization is the means not only of achieving technical and scientific excellence in health care, but it is also the strategy by which power and status are established among peers and society in general. In this study, the psychosocial aspects of these choices were analyzed based on selected medical education articles.
Objective:
To present the psychosocial factors that mediate the choices of medical specialties from the perspective of socio-historical psychology.
Method:
This is a literature review where a search was carried out using the descriptors ‘medical residency’, ‘specialty’ and ‘choice’ on the PubMed and SciELO platforms, for studies published in the last five years.
Result:
The search in the databases found 509 studies that matched the descriptors, from which 53 articles were selected for critical analysis. Of these 53 articles, 18 were selected for content analysis, resulting in indications of the important mediator role played in specialty choice and therefore significance in medical science educational processes of the psychosocial category: affectivity, identified in this study in terms of experiential emotions, the feeling of self-care, the feeling of belonging and in the emotions of interaction social in training processes.
Conclusion:
Affectivity is the main psychosocial mediating factor in the processes of choosing medical specialties. Indicating the need for more in-depth studies into the feelings and emotions of medical students to collaborate with a more critical and meaningful education for students and professionals, reflecting on the quality of collective health.
Keywords:
Medical specialty; Affectivity; Medical education