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2007; 29: e227–e234
WEB PAPER
Demographics and motives of medical schoolapplicants in Croatia
LIVIA PULJAK1, JASMINKA BRNJAS KRALJEVIC2, VESNA BARAC LATAS3 & DAMIR SAPUNAR4
1University of Split Medical School, Croatia, 2University of Zagreb Medical School, Croatia, 3University of RijekaSchool of Medicine, Croatia, 4University of Split Medical School, Croatia
Abstract
Background: According to data regarding number of physicians per 100 000 inhabitants, Croatia is below the European average.
Under those circumstances, more attention needs to be devoted to Croatian medical schools and their applicants.
Aims: This study sought to investigate admission trends of applicants to Croatian medical schools, analyse their demographics
and motives for medical school enrollment.
Methods: We collected admissions data of applicants to Croatian medical schools from 1979 to 2006. Motives for and against
medical school enrollment were assessed in a survey of 1146 applicants (response rate 84%, 966/1146) and 98 final-year medical
students (response rate 82%, 80/98) during July 2006.
Results: The number of applicants to Croatian medical schools had been declining until 1995, it was lowest during the 1991–1995
war in Croatia and it has been rising from 1996 onwards. Majority of applicants in 2006/07 were women (69%).
Most of the applicants attended general high schools. The applicants profess choosing a certain medical school for its quality
and reputation, but we showed that they actually chose the closest school. The main motives for medical school enrollment were
humanitarian and scientific, while main reasons against were perceived difficulty and financial burden. We showed that final-year
medical students profess significantly lower interest in science and that they are less interested in altruistic aspects of medicine.
Instead, great number of them would reconsider choosing medical studies again because of the corruption in medicine,
fear of mistakes and uncertainty of employment.
Conclusions: Following the admission trends in medical schools on a national level gives insight into the prospects of health care.
Analysis of motives for and against medical school enrollment can provide guidelines for their improvement. Unless Croatia
and other countries in transition devote more attention to recruitment, education and retention of physicians, the prospects
of our healthcare are poor.
Introduction
A high quality medical care and patient safety depends on the
availability of a sufficient number of physicians. According
to data regarding number of physicians per 100,000 inhabi-
tants, Croatia is below the average for majority of European
countries (Forgacs 2002; World Health Organization 2007).
Taking into account that medical studies last six years and
specialist training takes on average another four years, even
with immediate actions at least ten years would be necessary
to reach the desired standards (Rulebook on the specialization
of healthcare providers 2003; Rulebook on minimum require-
ments regarding premises; medical-technical equipment and
staff for performance of healthcare activity 2004).
Under the circumstances, special attention should be
given to both recruitment and retention of physicians.
Recruitment policies can only be effective when there
is a pool of appropriately qualified candidates to recruit from
(New Zealand Ministry of Health 2006). As for the retention,
although a very low emigration rate has been recorded
over the past few years, the possibility that emigration
may increase after Croatia joins the EU is alarming
(Kolcic et al. 2005). Therefore, Croatia and other countries
where the cost of medical training for the majority
of its medical students is sustained by government funds,
should find more reliable ways of retaining their health
professionals.
Practice points
. This is a 27-year retrospective study (1979-2006)
of applicants to Croatian medical schools.
. War negatively affects the medical school applicant
pool.
. Final-year medicals students in Croatia would not
choose medical school again due to financial reasons
and they are less motivated by science and altruistic
motives when compared to medical school applicants.
. Actions are needed to prevent loss of interest in science
during medical school.
. Promotional campaigns of medical schools in Croatia
should be redesigned.
Correspondence: Livia Puljak, MD, Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, University of Split Medical School, Soltanska 2, 21 000
Split, Croatia. Tel: þ385-21-557-807; fax: þ385-21-557-811; email: [email protected]
ISSN 0142–159X print/ISSN 1466–187X online/07/080227–8 � 2007 Informa UK Ltd. e227DOI: 10.1080/01421590701551714
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Imminent lack of physicians invariably turns public
attention to medical schools, which are expected to produce
enough medical doctors. Students’ motives for and against
applying to medical schools become an important factor that
existing medical schools should be aware of when trying
to recruit the best possible candidates. Knowing these motives
may be important for attracting the best students that will
be the real participants and partners in a process
of revitalization of academic medicine (Clark 2005).
The purpose of this study was the analysis of admission
trends of applicants to Croatian medical schools, analysis
of their demographics and motives for and against studying
medicine.
There are no data published about the historical dynamics
of medical school applicants in Croatia. Knowing the trends
in the number of prospective students is necessary for
evidence-based discussion and planning future admissions.
Thus we searched archives of all four medical schools in
Croatia to generate insight into the admission trends over
the last 27 years, as there is no systematic follow-up of such
data. We also wanted to see whether 1991–1995 war in Croatia
had any effect on the applicant pool.
The archives of University of Split Medical School were
searched for high school grades and admission test scores
of all of its 4186 applicants in the period 1979–2006 in order
to investigate quality of applicants. This school was chosen
for detailed admissions’ analysis because it had these data
readily available.
Finally, a survey was administered to medical school
applicants in all four medical schools to find out their
demographics and motives for and against choosing a medical
school. The same questionnaire was administered to the final-
year medical students to examine their motives for and against
choosing a medical school in a hypothetical situation
of enrolling the medical school again.
Methods
Archival data
We searched archives of all four Croatian medical schools to
find out the number of applicants. Medical school in Zagreb
was founded in 1917, the one in Rijeka in 1955, while medical
schools in Osijek and Split began enrolling students in the first
year of studies in 1979. Our data search encompassed 27 years
during the 1979–2006 period. The archives of medical schools
in Zagreb and Osijek lack complete data on the number of
admission test candidates for the whole period of 1979–2006;
there is no legal requirement for them to safeguard these data
and that could be an explanation why their archives are
incomplete.
Archives of the medical school in Split were also searched
for high school grade averages and admission test results of all
the 4186 admission test candidates that the School has had
from 1979 to 2005. Since the schools changed the maximum
number of points a candidate can have at the admission test
several times, we calculated success percentage for each
candidate, depending on the scoring system that was used
for the respective admission year.
Survey
Design
We analysed applicants’ motives associated with their decision
to apply for medical school. Applicants in all four Croatian
medical schools were surveyed during admissions in July
of 2006. We also surveyed sixth-year medical students in the
University of Rijeka School of Medicine to see whether their
motives for or against medical school will be comparable
to those of the applicants.
Setting
Physicians’ education in Croatia is based on a six-year
undergraduate curriculum offered in four medical schools
at Universities of Osijek, Rijeka, Split and Zagreb. In the
academic year of 2006/2007 these schools enrolled a total
of 567 medical students in the first year of studies; 75 in Osijek,
135 in Rijeka, 75 in Split and 282 in Zagreb. The number
of applicants to Croatian medical schools exceeds the
number of available places for students; therefore a limited
number of students is admitted each year and this number
is decided by the government. The selection of medical
students is based on both high school grade averages and the
admission test score to yield final ranking and identify the best
candidates. All four Croatian medical schools were in full
operation during the 1991–1995 war in Croatia (Marusic 1994;
Marusic & Marusic 2004).
Subjects
Medical school applicants received questionnaire in the
Student Offices during the admissions in July of 2006.
Sixth-year medical students in Rijeka also received a
questionnaire in the Student Office in July of 2006.
A self-administered questionnaire for medical school
applicants consisted of 8 questions about city where they
live, gender, average grade in high school, reasons for
choosing a specific Croatian medical school, their motives
for and against enrollment to a medical school.
A self-administered questionnaire for sixth-year medical
students consisted of questions about motives for or
against studying medicine, if they had a chance to choose
again.
The questionnaire included 16 motives in favor of medical
school enrollment and 13 reasons against it; we chose motives
for which we believed might be important to prospective
students. Each of these motives was rated on a 5-point Likert
scale (agree strongly to disagree strongly). For data presenta-
tion we grouped ‘agree strongly’ and ‘agree somewhat’ into
‘agree’, while ‘disagree strongly and disagree somewhat’ were
grouped into ‘disagree’.
Grades: Croatian education system is using grades 1–5,
where 1 (insufficient) is not a passing grade, while 2
(sufficient), 3 (good), 4 (very good) and 5 (excellent) are
passing grades.
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Analysis
Every questionnaire was marked with a serial number
and responses entered in a spreadsheet (Excel 2004,
Microsoft, USA). Archives’ data were also entered in the
Excel spreadsheet. Data were analysed using Pivot
Table Reports. The internal consistency was examined using
Cronbach’s alpha.
Results
Archives’ results
The data of the Croatian medical school applicants from 1979
to 2006 showed a continuous downward trend towards an all-
time low in 1995 (Figure 1). From 1996 to 2006 the number
of students applying to Croatian medical schools has had
an upward swing, and in some schools it has reached its initial
levels (Figure 1). The lowest number of applicants was
observed during the 1991–1995 war in Croatia.
Survey results
In all four Croatian medical schools there were total of 1146
prospective students at the admissions in July of 2006.
The applicants’ survey response rate was 95% in Osijek
(141/148), 96% in Rijeka (171/179), 92% in Split (122/132)
and 77% in Zagreb (532/687). The overall response rate
among applicants was 84% (966/1146).
Among applicants who responded to our survey, women
were in majority (69% women vs. 31% men). The ratio
between women and men respondents was similar in all four
medical schools. The dominance of female respondents
ranged from 67.1% at Zagreb to 74.3% at Osijek medical
school (Table 1).
Most of the applicants came from two types of high schools:
general high schools or vocational high schools for education
of middle-level medical personnel (nurses, physiotherapy,
laboratory and pharmaceutical technicians).
When high school success was evaluated, medical school
in Zagreb had the highest number of applicants with excellent
grades (72%), and Rijeka the lowest (58%). Rijeka also had
the most applicants with grades below 4.
We also investigated which medical school was the most
popular. For this, medical school applicants were asked
to rank all four Croatian medical schools according to their
preferences. For majority (60.9%), the first choice was the
oldest medical school in Croatian capital of Zagreb, followed
by the medical school in Rijeka as a second (42.4%) school
of choice.
Choice of a medical school was mostly based on the quality
of the school (85%) and its reputation (38%) (Table 2).
Only 3.8% of respondents considered promotional campaigns
of the schools an important factor when making a choice in
which school to study.
Although quality and reputation of the medical school
were the most cited factors for choosing a certain
medical school, when we compared in which city they live
and what school they chose, it turned out that majority of our
respondents chose geographically closest school, i.e. the
school in the domicile or a neighboring county (Figure 2).
This, however, does not apply to Zagreb Medical School,
which had a number of applicants from all over Croatia
(Figure 2D).
Analysis of applicants’ reasons for entering medicine found
five main factors: ‘‘love for medical profession’’, ‘‘humanity of
medicine’’, ‘‘interest in human body structure and function’’,
‘‘interest in science’’ and ‘‘opportunity to work with people’’
(Table 3).
The greatest concerns of applicants regarding entering
medical school were: ‘‘life-long learning’’, it is difficult to enroll
in medical school’’, ‘‘medical studies are too long’’, ‘‘medical
studies are too expensive’’, and ‘‘need for residency after
finishing medical school’’ (Table 4). Cronbach’s alpha was 0.89
in the applicants’ survey of motives.
To investigate whether motives for and against medical
studies differ by the end of the medical school, we surveyed
sixth-year medical students in one of the Croatian medical
schools. The survey was performed in Rijeka and had a
response rate of 82% (80/98). Cronbach’s alpha was 0.88 in
this survey.
The main reasons of final-year medical students for
enrolling medicine again would be ‘‘love for medical profes-
sion’’, ‘‘humanity of medicine’’, ‘‘interest in human body and
structure’’, ‘‘always wanted to be a doctor’’, and ‘‘opportunity
to work with people’’ (Table 3). The main reasons for not
choosing medical school the second time around would be:
‘‘uncertainty of employment’’, ‘‘difficult financial situation in
healthcare’’, ‘‘medical studies are too expensive’’ and
Figure 1. Number of admission test candidates in all four
medical schools in Croatia, 1979–2006. Each line represents
one medical school, as indicated by a legend.
Table 1. Sex of admission test candidates surveyed in all fourmedical schools in July of 2006.
8n (%) 9n (%) Total n
Osijek 36 (25.7) 104 (74.3) 140
Rijeka 51 (29.8) 120 (70.2) 171
Split 33 (27.0) 89 (73.0) 122
Zagreb 175 (32.9) 357 (67.1) 532
Total 295 (30.6) 670 (69.4) 965
Medical school admission trends in Croatia
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‘‘corruption in healthcare, residency placement and career
advancement’’ (Table 4).
Discussion
This study shows that the number of applications to Croatian
medical schools has been declining in the past, hitting the
bottom during the 1991–1995 war in Croatia. After the war,
however, the number of admission test candidates rose again.
To our best knowledge, this is the first study to analyse
the number of medical school applicants on a national level
in such a long period of time.
Challenging labor market conditions, difficulties in
obtaining desired specialization after graduation (Kolcic et al.
2005), institutional failings (Vrhovac 2002; Chalmers 2006)
and deeply embedded perception of Croatian medicine as
a corrupt (GFK Group 2006) close-knit community could have
contributed to declining interest in Croatian medical schools
among prospective students. These problems are not exclusive
for Croatia as other transitional countries are experiencing
the same (Albreht & Klazinga 2002; Balabanova & McKee
2002; Fister & McKee 2005; Jakusovaite et al. 2005).
Small applicant pool during 1991–1995 war in Croatia can
be noted as another important negative consequence of war.
Education is not the priority in times of war and even medical
Table 2. Reasons for choosing a certain medical school in Croatia among medical school applicants surveyed in July of 2006 (in percent).
Osijek Rijeka Split Zagreb Total
Quality of the studies 84.3 79.5 82.8 88.9 85.8
Reputation of a specific medical school 32.9 28.7 32.0 42.9 37.5
Cost of studying 22.1 19.3 17.2 5.1 11.6
Friends’ recommendations 16.4 21.6 6.6 8.0 11.5
Quality of the student life 8.6 11.1 9.8 8.8 9.3
Promotional campaign of the medical school 3.6 5.3 9.8 2.0 3.8
Figure 2. The counties are primary territorial and administrative subdivisions of Croatia. The maps depict the counties that were
the major source of 2006/07 applicants in the medical schools in (A) Osijek, (B) Rijeka, (C) Split and (D) Zagreb.
L. Puljak et al.
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students that were studying during that time obtained
significantly lower grades in 5 major courses during the war
than before or after it (Bergovec et al. 2002).
Following the war not much has changed in the way
medical studies are performed, but the market conditions have
changed (Chen & Mastilica 1998) and now medical profes-
sionals are entitled to a private practice. One can assume that
the entrepreneurial promise of prosperity may be among the
reasons why high school students are choosing the medical
school in greater numbers again, but our survey results show
the opposite.
The motivations and other factors used by medical students
in making their career choices for specific medical specialties
have been looked in a number of studies (Mahoney et al. 2004;
Wright et al. 2004; Chang et al. 2006), but there are very few
studies that assess the generic factors which make the
medicine itself of interest to potential medical students
(McManus et al. 2006). Therefore, we assessed what would
be the pro and contra motives for medical school enrollment.
The most important motives for studying medicine turned out
to be idealistic and altruistic, while the least important were
those that could be associated with prestige, money and social
status of a physician.
Students are able to apply to Croatian universities after
graduating from the four-year high school, which is usually
at the age of 18. It could be that in this early age
prospective medical students are less interested in monetary
and ego-related benefits of medical profession. That is why
we did another survey of final-year medical students, which
showed that their motives to choose medical school again
would be the same as applicants’. However, when one
looks into these motives quantitatively, final-year students
choose these motives 20–30% less frequently. That would
mean that some of their noble motives fade away by the
end of the studies. This is in contrast to the report by Prka
et al. who found no evidence that medical students become
less altruistic and more materialistic over the course of their
medical education (Prka et al. 2002). Interest in science,
for example, is half less important motive for final-year
students than for the applicants. This is particularly
Table 3. Motives for choosing medical school among medical school applicants and final-year medical students surveyed in July of 2006(in percent).
Medical school applicants Final-year medical students
Motives Agree Neutral Disagree Agree Neutral Disagree
Love for medical profession 95.2 3.8 1.0 92.4 6.3 1.3
Humanity of medicine 96.4 2.6 1.0 82.3 11.4 6.3
Interest in human body structure and function 94.1 4.5 1.5 84.2 7.9 7.9
Interest in science 93.3 4.7 2.0 63.1 19.7 17.1
An opportunity to work/interact with people 91.2 5.6 3.2 76.0 10.7 13.3
MD’s degree is valid in the whole world 87.9 6.7 5.4 45.5 11.7 42.9
I always wanted to be a physician 77.3 12.5 10.2 74.9 9.2 15.8
I want to test myself in a competitive field 70.8 17.0 12.3 43.4 35.5 21.1
Role models in medical profession 51.9 16.9 31.2 23.7 6.6 69.7
Personal or family experience with diseases 39.9 13.7 46.5 34.6 6.7 58.7
Possibility of high earnings 53.0 14.4 32.7 23.7 17.1 59.2
Power associated with physician’s social status 42.8 17.0 40.2 23.7 14.5 61.9
Privileged position in a society 37.1 16.6 46.3 26.3 13.2 60.5
Family tradition 22.7 4.8 72.6 15.4 7.7 76.9
Family or parents’ wish 17.7 6.2 76.1 5.2 5.3 89.4
Table 4. Reasons against entering medical school among medical school applicants and final-year medical students surveyed in July of2006 (in percent).
Medical school applicants Final-year medical students
Reasons Agree Neutral Disagree Agree Neutral Disagree
Life-long learning 51.1 13.6 35.3 52 13.3 34.7
It is difficult to enroll in medical school 65.3 13.0 21.6 31.1 9.5 59.4
Medical school is too long 61.9 12.4 25.7 65.3 6.7 28.0
Medical school is expensive 59.5 19.8 20.8 76.6 7.8 15.6
Need for residency after finishing school 50.1 14.7 35.2 57.5 10.9 31.5
Corruption in health care, residency placement and career advancement 41.2 24.7 34.2 69.7 13.2 17.1
Fear of mistakes and malpractice law suits 41.1 20.0 39.0 60.5 19.7 19.7
Difficult financial situation in health care 39.1 23.7 37.3 75.3 11.7 13
Uncertainty of employment 30.8 19.1 50.1 81.3 8 10.7
No time for family and private life 32.7 17.1 50.2 56.6 13.2 30.3
Fear of contracting an infection from patients 27.3 20.3 52.4 21.6 16.2 62.1
My grades are not good enough 24.9 11.1 63.9 9.3 6.7 84
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disturbing and worrying regarding their prospects for later
academic involvement.
It is argued that altruistic motives are important for most
people, but there are also demand characteristics which make
respondents less likely to rate highly social desirable items
as ‘‘thought it would be glamorous/good life-style/status’’,
or ‘‘job security’’, and even less so for ‘‘becoming rich’’,
or ‘‘having power over people’’, however true they may be
(McManus et al. 2006). Self-administered questionnaires are
used with the assumption that they will be honestly answered
by the respondents because they are anonymous, and their
validity and reliability has been proven in numerous studies
(Alexiou et al. 1969; Shibata et al. 2002). Therefore, we have
no reason to doubt that the majority of our respondents indeed
embark on medical studies out of altruistic motives.
Some argue that becoming a physician today requires more
than altruism, it requires courage, managerial skills, adminis-
trative knowledge and no errors (Brase 2001), but that may
be a realization that comes later in life.
As for the reasons against choosing medical school, top
three applicants’ concerns are that it is too difficult, too long
and too expensive. Common doctors’ complaints about
malpractice lawsuits, uncertainty of employment and lack
of time for personal life (Chong et al. 2004; Bolanowski
2005; Katz et al. 2005) seem to be the last concerns of the
medical school applicants. Major reasons against choosing
medicine again, were pretty different for final-year students;
being in medicine for six years they are all too well aware
of difficult financial situation in Croatian healthcare
and hardships in obtaining a desired residency
(or internship). For final-year students, the most important
reasons against choosing again a medical school were
money-related.
Family wish apparently has little or no influence on
choosing medical school. Also, the applicants are less
concerned about the expensiveness of the studying, difficulty
of finding a job and mistakes, probably because they have
not been immersed in the healthcare prior to the admissions.
The professed expensiveness of a medical school in Croatia
is due to the several facts: (1) it lasts longer then any other
university studies, which postpones getting a job and earning,
(2) the tuition, although paid by only one third of students, is
more expensive than in other schools, and (3) the books for
medical students are expensive.
When we compared the ‘‘for and against motives’’
of enrollment of the applicants in the year 2006 versus those
of the final year medical students, the sample in the first case
is 1146 prospective students applying as candidates to all four
medical schools, whereas the sample of the final year students
is 98 students of only the Rijeka Medical School. It is unlikely
that the asymmetric samples in number and students’ origin
could affect the results, especially when these results are given
in percentages. However, one should have this asymmetry
in mind when analysing the results.
Our survey revealed additional information about Croatian
medical school applicants. The majority of applicants were
women, which is in line with multiple reports on so-called
feminization of medicine (Notzer & Brown 1995; Paik 2000;
Thomas 2000).
The majority of the respondents came from general high
schools, which provide broad general knowledge and good
preparation for university. Specialized high schools for
middle-level medical staff, the second most important source
of future physicians, educate their pupils to become
nurses or technicians that can start working right after
graduation.
The most popular medical school in Croatia turned out
to be the one in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. With just under
one million inhabitants, Zagreb is home for about one fifth of
Croatian population and it is often viewed as a city with
the best career prospects and the most attractive social scene.
Zagreb medical school is also the biggest of four Croatian
medical schools and it is possible that for some students size
does matter.
Quality and reputation were cited as the most important
reasons for choosing a certain medical school, but when
we matched the city where our respondents live with their
choice of medical school it turned out that they chose
the closest one. This is easily explained with lower costs
of studying, as it is customary in Croatian society for adult
children to live with their families.
Only 3.8% of respondents considered promotional
campaigns of the medical schools to be important for their
decision to study medicine. Therefore, we can conclude that
promotional efforts of Croatian medical schools, introduced
several years ago, unfortunately did not achieve much to sway
undecided students towards medical studies.
Knowing all this, our medical schools should become
actively engaged in their students’ career after graduation.
One-year obligatory internship that all Croatian physicians
need to do before taking a licensing exam should be
guaranteed for every student as soon as they graduate,
in agreement with the hospitals. Currently, young physicians
can apply for these internships several times a year; they are
often without a proper mentor and more often than not unpaid
for the whole year.
After the internship is over, physicians can take state exam
and became licensed. The majority of them will then work for
years as temporary substitutes for family physicians.
Specialization of choice is hard to get as there are very few
openings available and selection criteria depend completely
upon the whim of an institution. Although it is not a
straightforward task and it includes numerous bureaucratic
obstacles, young physicians can pay the specialization
themselves, which means they will pay certain amount of
money to an institution to train them and they will not have
any salary during those training years. However, the institution
where they are specializing is not obliged to hire them
afterwards.
Because of the lack of doctors, there is a danger of trying
to fill the gap at the cost of quality of doctors. Introduction
of high quality state exam would prevent import of inappro-
priately qualified work power as it was proposed long ago
(Marusic & Sapunar 1996).
The motives of medical school applicants seem to be right,
but the reasons why final-year medical students wouldn’t
choose medical school again should be a warning to Croatian
medical institutions. In a system where meritocracy is still in its
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infancy, when years of studying and hard work cannot ensure
a decent job for physicians, their emigration sounds like
something we should realistically expect.
Conclusions
The applicant pool in Croatian medical schools was
affected the most by the 1991–1995 war in Croatia. In the
last ten years (1996–2006) the number of applicants
to Croatian medical schools has been increasing and
the applicants profess humanitarian and scientific motives
for choosing medical studies. The final-year medical students,
however, would reconsider enrolling the medical school
if they had a chance to do it again due to a difficulty in
finding a desired job, corruption and financial crisis in Croatian
health care.
Investment in health produced some of the richest
returns in not only social but also economic development
(Commission on Macroeconomics and Health 2001) and
therefore Croatia needs to address the imminent shortage
of physicians. An idealism of medical school applicants will
fade away and, if nothing changes soon, they will take their
knowledge and skills abroad as soon as they get a chance.
This may well be true for other countries in transition
that borne majority of costs of physicians’ education.
Therefore, Croatia and other countries in transition should
devote more attention to recruitment and retention of
physicians.
Acknowledgements
We appreciate help of Josip Baric, Boris Matutinovic, Nada
Kecman, Iva Kapovic, Josipa Rados and Katja Radonic, the
Student Office staff in Croatian medical schools, for adminis-
tering questionnaires to the admission test candidates and help
with the archives.
Thanks to Ana Marusic, Ivica Grkovic, Carlos David
Esteban Nieto, Katarina Vukojevic and Sanja Lovric Kojundzic
for critical reading of the manuscript.
Notes on contributors
LIVIA PULJAK, MD is a Researcher and Instructor at the Department
of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, University of Split Medical School.
She is a published author of multiple articles and has editorial experiences
with electronic and print media. Her research interests include medical
education and neuropathic pain.
JASMINKA BRNJAS KRALJEVIC, BSC. Phys, PhD. Phys, is the Professor
at the Department of Physics and Biophysics, University of Zagreb
Medical School. She authored multiple textbooks and research
articles. Her research interests include magnetic resonance spectro-
scopy and imaging, spectroscopy of human lipoproteins and medical
education.
VESNA BARAC LATAS, MD, PhD is the Assistant Professor at the
Department of Physiology and Immunology, University of Rijeka
School of Medicine. She is a Vice Dean for Education for the School
and she authored multiple authors. Her research interests include
central nervous system demyelination in multiple sclerosis and medical
education.
DAMIR SAPUNAR, MD, PhD is the Professor at the Department
of Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, University of
Split Medical School. He had been a Vice Dean for Education at the School.
He authored many articles on medical education. His research interests
include neuropathic pain and medical education.
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