News Release

Some concerns about doctors' career choices

Career choices of United Kingdom medical graduates of 1999 and 2000: questionnaire surveys BMJ Volume 326, pp 194-5

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

There has been a small increase recently in the number of newly qualified doctors wanting to enter general practice, finds a study in this week's BMJ. However, newly qualified doctors are still much less likely than doctors from the 1970s and 1980s to choose general practice as a career.

Researchers at the University of Oxford surveyed over 8,000 medical graduates who qualified in the United Kingdom in 1999 and 2000 about their long term career choices. Their choices were compared with respondents of a similar survey carried out in 1996.

Choices for general practice increased, whereas choices for hospital medical specialties, surgical specialties, and paediatrics decreased. Choices for obstetrics and gynaecology halved. Differences between men and women in choices of specialty remained substantial.

One in ten graduates "definitely" or "probably" did not intend to practise medicine in the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future. Including those who were undecided, a quarter had doubts about practising medicine in the United Kingdom.

The percentage of newly qualified doctors intending to enter general practice has increased from 20% in 1996, but remains much lower than the figure of 40-50% of graduates of the 1970s and 1980s, say the authors. Concerns about career prospects in obstetrics and gynaecology have reduced the numbers choosing this specialty to the lowest ever recorded, although changes in choice for other specialties are less striking, they add.

Knowledge of young doctors' career choices will help planners to anticipate whether future service requirements in different specialties will be met from United Kingdom sources, conclude the authors.

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