【】 Aims To explore the decisive process of medical students changing from medicine to other majors
and what factors hindering them continuing to study the medicine. To provide the empirical evidence for the career education aiming at improving medical students’ career adaptability and career identity. Methods Semi-structured in-depth interviews were used to interview 6 students changing from medicine to other majors. Interviews were recorded on audio-tape with students’ permission and then transcribed verbatim. The transcribed interviews were analyzed according to interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results Five superordinate themes emerged: motivation of choosing medicine; cognition of medicine; confusion about the future career; information impact of different channels; unsuccessful assumption of changing majors. Conclusion To explore the decessive process of medical students’ changing majors can contribute to understand the status of students’ career adaptiblity. Which can provide empirical evidence for the educational strategy to improve the student’s career identity and stabilize professional thought
and then avoid the waste of medical talents training.