Table 3.

Doctors who considered but rejected a specialty: distribution of reasons given, as a percentage of all doctors who considered but rejected a specialty*, by sex

Reason for rejection	Men (%)	Women (%)	All (%)	Men (n)	Women (n)	All (n)
Work-life balance	28.2	47.0**	40.3	229	684	913
Job content	39.6	32.4*	35.0	321	472	793
Nature of work/type of patients in rejected specialty	14.5	11.0	12.3	118	160	278
First-hand experience of the rejected specialty	12.3	11.0	11.5	100	160	260
Administration/bureaucracy	1.5	1.0	1.2	12	15	27
Preference for current specialty choice	12.7	10.6	11.4	103	155	258
Competition and/or exams	13.8	11.3	12.2	112	164	276
Too few/competition for training posts	5.1	4.5	4.7	41	66	107
Competitive specialty/“competition”	8.3	6.6	7.2	67	96	163
Exams – too difficult, or too many	1.4	1.0	1.1	11	14	25
Stress and/or working conditions	11.7	9.4	10.2	95	137	232
Training content and/or quality	11.2	6.3**	8.1	91	92	183
General content and/or structure and/or quality	10.6	5.4**	7.2	86	78	164
Too much requirement to do research	1.2	1.0	1.1	10	15	25
Training too long	5.4	4.9	5.1	44	72	116
Working relationships	5.4	4.9	5.1	44	71	115
Self-appraisal	4.7	4.4	4.5	38	64	102
Litigation	1.4	3.0	2.4	11	43	54
Lack of exposure to rejected specialty	2.0	2.1	2.1	16	31	47
Lack of long-term career stability	3.3	1.2*	2.0	27	18	45
Change in personal circumstances	0.7	1.9	1.5	6	28	34
Advice	1.5	1.4	1.5	12	21	33
Inadequate salary	2.2	0.7*	1.2	18	10	28
May not be jobs where I want to live	0.5	0.5	0.5	4	7	11
Total (n = 100%)				811	1456	2267

*Some doctors gave more than one reason, and hence the number of reasons shown exceeds the numbers of doctors.

Tests for significant differences between men and women: **denotes P < 0.001 *denotes P < 0.01