Correspondence (reply): In Reply

After decades of the so-called “deluge” of doctors, topics such as career expectations of medical students, but also the job satisfaction of doctors with their medical careers during and after specialty training in Germany have thus far been observed and researched to an unsatisfactory degree. One example of an instrument used for regular surveys is Canada’s www.nationalphysiciansurvey.ca. As Dr Seidenstücker writes, research is needed into medical training with a longitudinal perspective, by means of large, inter-institutional cohort studies, and for more targeted considerations of the topic of differential assessments and expectations of men and women, which Dr Dewey points out in his letter. Methodological aspects, such as were mentioned by the Heidelberg group of authors, should be explored by means of continuing (health services) research activities. Focusing on merely one preference for specialty training suggests precision, but is actually an artifact since during the course of studies, aspirations in terms of further training are subject to significant change and take concrete shape only over time. This is exactly what our data showed, that the number of options for specialty training decreases over the study course. We think that the question raised by Wenderlein is more important—namely, that of the further development of undergraduate and postgraduate medical training. A closer orientation of medical training on the basis society’s need for medical services seems overdue.