[How to anticipate specialization at the Examen National Classant (National Entrance Examination) to encourage interns to choose urology].
OBJECTIVE
To analyse the value of an introduction to urology session to recruit interns following the Examen National Classant (ENC) (National Entrance Examination).


METHODS
Over a 2-year period, interns appointed to surgery in Paris participated in a one-day introduction to urology session before starting work as surgical interns. A questionnaire at the beginning of internship recorded: age, gender, teaching hospital, student attachment in urology and desired specialization as a function of the surgical training programmes proposed by the ENC. Items concerning the desired specialization were resubmitted to the interns at the end of the session.


RESULTS
Population. 166 interns, 98 females (59%) and 68 males (41%) with a mean age of 24.8 +/- 5 years (range: 22-31) participated in this study. 110 interns had trained at a Parisian teaching hospital (66.2%) and 56 (33.8%) had trained at a provincial teaching hospital. 31 interns (18.7%) had completed at least one urology attachment during their medical training. Desired specialization: Orthopaedics was the discipline most frequently cited (n=48; 28.9%). Urology was selected by 19 interns (11.4%), 17 of whom had completed an urology attachment during their medical training. At the end of the introduction to urology session, another 15 interns initially oriented towards other specializations were interested in urology training.


CONCLUSIONS
Specialization of certain surgical disciplines during internship could become inevitable in the medium term. In this case, the organization of national introduction to urology sessions in each ENC allocation region would be a solution to encourage motivated interns to immediately choose urology as their surgical speciality by preference rather than by default.
Dubosq
Francis
F
Conseil d'Administration de l'Association Française des Urologues en Formation.
Beley
Sébastien
S
Neuzillet
Yann
Y
Larré
Stéphane
S
Simon
Pascal
P
Ballereau
Charles
C
Richard
François
F
Roupret
Morgan
M
D000328:Adult; D002321:Career Choice; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency; D008297:Male; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014572:Urology