Struggling junior doctor jobseekers would rather move abroad than move within UK

Junior doctors who are having difficulty securing a training post or a job after receiving their certificate of completion of training (CCT) are more likely to move abroad than move to a different part of the United Kingdom, a survey by the BMA has found.

When asked what options they would consider if they were unable to secure an accredited training post, doctors in the foundation programme or in core training were most likely to consider moving abroad to continue training (63%). Junior doctors in higher specialty or run-through training programmes, including GP specialty training, were also most likely to cite moving abroad as a possibility if they were not able to secure a consultant or GP post (58%).

Less than half of foundation and core trainees and higher specialty and run-through trainees said that moving within the UK was an option if they could not get a post (43% and 47%, respectively).

Junior doctors not in a higher specialty training programme would be more likely to leave medicine entirely (45%) than move to a different region, whereas only a third (38%) of doctors in higher specialty training said they would consider this option.

These findings reflect the unwillingness of junior doctors to settle for “second best” posts, said Tom Dolphin, chairman of the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee. “Junior doctors are not the kind of people who will just settle—we want the kind of job we have trained for,” he said. “Rather than take staff grade jobs or posts that don’t make full use of their potential, training, and experience, I think that these reasonably mobile young people with sellable skills are thinking, ‘Why not go abroad?’” Most doctors who work abroad do come back to the UK eventually, he added.

The BMA’s survey of junior doctors’ morale and career intentions involved sending emails with a link to the survey to 2043 junior doctor members in August this year. A quarter (573) responded. After exclusions, the final survey sample included 560 junior doctors (28% response rate): 384 (69%) doctors in higher or run-through specialty training, 72 (13%) foundation trainees, 54 (10%) doctors in core training, and 43 (8%) doctors who were on out of programme experience or were taking a career break.

Respondents were most likely to say that their long term career goal was to work in the UK as a consultant (73%) or a GP (17%), although a fifth of respondents reported that their long term goal was a combination of the various options.

More than one in 10 (13%) said that their long term career goal was to work overseas, a significant increase on the proportion of respondents who chose this option in the 2008 survey.