UK-trained junior doctors' intentions to work in UK medicine: questionnaire surveys, three years after graduation

Journal article

Objective

To report on the career intentions, three years after qualification, of 12 national cohorts of UK-trained doctors who qualified between 1974 and 2012, and, specifically, to compare recent UK medical graduates’ intentions to work in medicine in the UK with earlier graduates.

Design

Questionnaire surveys of cohorts of UK medical graduates defined by year of graduation.

Setting

UK.

Participants

30,272 UK medical graduates.

Main outcome measures

Stated level of intention to pursue a long-term career in medicine in the UK.

Results

The response rate was 62% (30,272/48,927). We examined responses to the question ‘Apart from temporary visits abroad, do you intend to practise medicine in the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future?' Of doctors from UK homes, 90% had specified that they would ‘definitely or probably’ practise medicine in the UK in the surveys of 1977–1986, 81% in 1996–2011 and 64% in 2015. Those who said that they would probably or definitely not practise medicine in the UK comprised 5% in 1977–1986, 8% in 1996–2011 and 15% in 2015. Most who were not definite about a future career in UK medicine indicated that they would wish to practise medicine outside the UK rather than to leave medicine.

Conclusions

The wish to remain in UK medical practice in the 2015 survey was unprecedentedly low in this unique series of 40 years of surveys.

Authors: Surman, GM; Goldacre, MJ; Lambert, TW

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Journal: Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
• Volume: 110
• Issue: 12
• Pages: 493-500
• Publication date: 2017-11-08
• Acceptance date: 2017-10-03
• DOI: 10.1177/0141076817738500
• EISSN: 1758-1095
• ISSN: 0141-0768
• Keywords: attrition from medicine; medical careers; medical education