Predisposing factors of student drop-out early in the career of Medicine

Abstract

Student early drop out is a common problem often caused by poor career counseling and motivational aspects. To determine the factors or aspects that predispose to it, is carried out a study of cases (N = 391) and controls (N = 782) ratio of 1:2 including freshmen of the cohorts 2010, 2012 and 2013, of the career of medicine of the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of San Carlos of Guatemala (Usac), who had deserted from the Faculty the following year for his first assignment. It is considered demographic, academics, family, labor, health and motivational factors, studying the most important in defection. The results indicate that the educational level of the parents (OR 1.4 CI 1.07 – 1.83), religion (OR 1.65 CI 1.03 – 2.66) and the fact to perform a paid work simultaneously with the studies (OR 1.49 CI 1.03 – 2.14), besides the final results in the courses of Chemistry (OR 7.54 CI 5.56 – 10.24), Physics (OR 6.74 CI 4.88 – 9.32), Biology (OR 6.86 CI 5.09 – 9.23) and Psychology (OR 5.92 CI 4.38 – 8.01), are factors that predispose the student to dropout from school (p < 0.05). Actions had been taken into consideration to prevent the repetition of these academic subjects and thereby avoid early abandonment from the School Medicine and to keep closely monitoring of the students who will enroll in the coming years and that show or present the above risk factors in order to prevent the students from leaving.