Work-life balance	Domestic circumstances, hours worked. (female rejecting hospital medicine)
	Antisocial working hours. (female rejecting emergency medicine)
	Not compatible with having a family. (female rejecting surgery)
	Long hours and working lots of nights and weekends. (female rejecting hospital medicine)
	Hours, hours and hours. (female rejecting surgery)
	I want a life. (male rejecting surgery)
	Not suitable realistically for a working mum. (female rejecting surgery)
	Long out-of-hours commitment. (female rejecting anaesthetics)
	Shift work. (male rejecting emergency medicine)
	Working hours. (female rejecting obstetrics and gynaecology)
	On-call commitment. (male rejecting surgery)
Job content
Nature of work/type of patients in rejected specialty	Violent patients. (female rejecting psychiatry)
	Unrewarding. Difficulty to make people ‘better’. (female rejecting psychiatry)
	Too dull & monotonous. Not practically challenging. Too many ‘social’ patients. (male rejecting GP)
	I think I would find it boring. (female rejecting GP)
	The hours, lack of continuity. (female rejecting emergency medicine)
	I missed the acutely ill patients and practical procedures. (female rejecting GP)
	Realizing the number of persistent complainers that are the mainstay of GP. (female rejecting GP)
	Lack of patient and social contact. (female rejecting pathology)
First-hand experience of the rejected specialty	Experience during F1 post. (male rejecting psychiatry)
	Bad experience as PRHO surgery. (male rejecting surgery)
Administration/bureaucracy	Too much management involved, paperwork and not enough clinical practice. (female rejecting GP)
	4-hour treatment. (male rejecting emergency medicine)
Preference for current specialty choice	Discovered I loved surgery. (female rejecting GP)
	Realized surgery was much more exciting! (female rejecting GP)
	I love surgery! (female rejecting psychiatry)
	Miss adult medicine. (male rejecting paediatrics)
Competition and/or exams
Too few/competition for training posts	Lack of training places. (male rejecting surgery)
	So few posts, very competitive. (female rejecting surgery)
Competitive specialty/“competition”	Competition. (male rejecting paediatrics)
	The competitive nature of the training. (female rejecting surgery)
Exams – too difficult, or too many	Requirement to get MRCP. (male rejecting hospital medicine)
	Too many exams. (MRCP, MRCPath, PhD etc) (male rejecting pathology)
Stress and/or working conditions	Intense workload. (female rejecting paediatrics)
	Stress. Potential for litigation. (female rejecting obstetrics and gynaecology)
Training content and/or quality
Training content and/or structure and/or quality	General surgical training. (male rejecting surgery)
	Unclear ‘specialist training’ put forward by MMC. (female rejecting surgery)
Research requirements	Too academic. (male rejecting hospital medicine)
	I don't enjoy research. (female rejecting hospital medicine)
Training too long	Longer training pathway. (male rejecting hospital medicine)
	Prolonged and competitive training. (male rejecting surgery)
Working relationships	Male dominated surgical world unattractive as a female. (female rejecting surgery)
	The attitudes of surgeons. (female rejecting surgery)