# Exploring Medical Students’ Representations of Future Specialties and Parenthood: Protocol for a Scoping Review

## TL;DR

This study will explore how medical students' views on specialties and parenthood influence their career choices, aiming to highlight challenges in balancing family and work.

## Contribution

This is the first scoping review to examine medical students' career and parental expectations without limiting specialty focus.

## Key findings

- The review will identify themes linking parenthood and specialty choice in medical students.
- It will map existing evidence to highlight research gaps in career-family balance for medical students.
- Findings will provide insights into challenges in physician shortages and the feminization of medicine.

## Abstract

Several factors come into consideration when medical students choose their future specialty. Among these factors, the desire to start a family and planning the best timing for pregnancy may interfere with career advancement in certain specialties.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first scoping review aimed at understanding medical students’ career choice and parental expectations without restriction of the specialty chosen. This protocol describes a scoping review aiming to understand how representations regarding specialties and parenthood influence medical students’ career choice.

This protocol describes a scoping review aiming to understand how representations regarding specialties and parenthood influence medical students’ career choice.

We will search PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, ERIC, and PsycInfo for literature. Additionally, the reference lists of included articles will be screened for further inclusion. Rayyan and Endnote will be used to organize data screening and extraction. The database selection will allow us to extract and analyze data from various disciplines. This diversity will increase our understanding of medical students’ career and personal life decisions. This protocol and the upcoming scoping review have been designed following the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines to ensure the quality of the searching process, the data screening, and the data extraction.

This study will conduct a thematic synthesis of how the concepts of representations and perceptions of parenthood are used by medical students in the selected literature, comparing them to theoretical frameworks to clarify their meanings. We also plan to identify key themes related to parenthood and medical specialty choice when planning a career. As of December 2025, we proceeded to data screening. We anticipate publishing our results in the second quarter of 2026.

This scoping review aims to better understand medical students’ representations of medical specialties and parenthood, and how these perceptions influence their specialty preferences and career choices. By mapping existing evidence across various disciplines, the review will identify research gaps and provide a foundation for future studies. The findings will offer valuable insights into the challenges of balancing career aspirations and family life, particularly in the context of physician shortages and the growing feminization of the medical profession.