View article

The hidden curriculum may be framed as the culture, beliefs and behaviours of a community that are passed to students outside formal course offerings. Medical careers involve diverse specialties, each with a different culture, yet how medical students negotiate these cultures has not been fully explored. Using surgery as a case study, we aimed to establish, first, whether a specialty‐specific hidden curriculum existed for students, and second, how students encountered and negotiated surgical career options.

Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, we explored students' thoughts, beliefs and experiences regarding career decisions and surgery. An exploratory questionnaire informed the discussion schedule for semi‐structured individual interviews. Medical students were purposively sampled by year group, gender and career intentions in surgery. Data collection and analysis were …