A qualitative study on the career plans of intern veterinarians and their approaches to academic career-making


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Yerlikaya N., Ünsal Adaca A., Melikoğlu Gölcü B., Başağaç Gül R. T.

Veteriner Hekimler Derneği Dergisi, cilt.94, sa.2, ss.127-136, 2023 (Hakemli Dergi)

Özet

This qualitative study was conducted to determine career plans of intern veterinarians and their approaches to academic career-making. The data of the study were collected from the homework assignment files of 90 intern veterinarians participating in Turkish and English intern rotation programmes of the Department of Veterinary History and Deontology, Veterinary Faculty, Ankara University in the Fall Semester of the 2020-2021 Academic Year. In the research, under the theme of career plan, four categories were created as “private sector”, “public sector”, “academic career” and “other”, and these categories were divided into codes among themselves. The data were evaluated by the content analysis method. As a result of the research, it was determined that 39 interns wanted to work in the field of pet medicine in the first place, while 13 interns wanted to pursue academic careers in the first place. 26 interns had a positive attitude toward pursuing an academic career. For those who did not think about an academic career but wanted to get a graduate degree, the most preferred field was clinical sciences. 62 participants, who did not consider pursuing an academic career, stated that being an academic is a difficult and tiring profession as the primary reason. The study showed that many parameters play a role in determining the career plans of intern veterinarians and academic career is not preferred by them due to some disadvantages.