Students have mixed feelings about proposed changes to foundation programme

The UK Foundation Programme Office (UKFPO) has launched a consultation to decide whether to change the process for allocating medical students to their first jobs in hospitals.1

Some students are concerned that there is not enough time to introduce the changes, as the next application process for places on the 2024 programme is due to begin this July, while others believe that the changes will lead to a much fairer process and should be brought in as soon as possible.

The current system to determine where applicants complete their two years of foundation training is based on students’ national ranking and their order of preference of the UK’s 19 foundation schools. Half of a candidate’s ranking is determined by their educational performance measure (EPM)—how well they perform in medical school—and the other half is based on the results of their situational judgment test (SJT), a …