Senior house officers: the lost tribe?
BMJ 2005; 331 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0510372 (Published 01 October 2005) Cite this as: BMJ 2005;331:0510372
- Kaji Sritharan, clinical research fellow1
- 1Imperial College. London
Recent concerns about doctor shortages have seen the creation of new medical schools, expansion of existing medical schools, and active recruitment of doctors from overseas. It seems a bizarre contradiction junior doctors unable to find jobs? Is there really a problem?
Simple healthy competition?
Is this all down to the same healthy competition for jobs that happens every year? It doesn't seem that simple to the doctors affected. “I've applied for at least 30 jobs and have only been shortlisted for one and this had over 1050 applicants,” says Clare Swaney, a career accident and emergency senior house officer (SHO). “In the end though it came down to experience and I'm in the situation where I'm too experienced for foundation year 2(F2) pilots but not experienced enough for a stand alone SHO post. It's not a problem that is isolated to any one region either-I have friends in London, Newcastle, and Manchester who are in a similar position.“ “There has always been healthy competition and I was lucky in that I did get a job,” says SHO in surgery Pete Holt, “but at least a third of my friends-and these are people who have trained in Oxford, Cambridge, or London don't have a job for this August.”
Ask the BMA
In July 2005, BMA News reported that more than a third of SHOs had no job for August. “I think that the situation is a lot worse than that,” says James Haddow, an SHO in surgery who has recently returned from working in New Zealand. “Six out of 10 of my close friends have been unable to get jobs:” In addition, BMJ Careers has reported a …
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