A third of GPs experienced second thoughts about their choice of specialty at the beginning of their registrar training, and a quarter were not completely certain after attaining fellowship, a survey suggests.

Researchers have blamed doctors’ limited exposure to general practice during pre-vocational training for part of the problem.

It follows a survey of 775 doctors who graduated from the University of Queensland over the past two decades on their levels of “career certainty” at five stages of their training.  

They found that 22% of GPs said they knew that General Practice was to be their vocation from the very beginning of medical school.