Title: Cohort Studies of Doctors’ Careers 2013 – 2015
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Planning and provision of health services is fundamentally underpinned by the distribution of doctors: this includes the distribution of doctors by specialty, geographical location and grade. Policy interests include maintenance of sufficient supply, without over-production, of doctors to enable the NHS to meet service commitments; assessment of doctors’ views on education and training; junior doctors’ hours and patterns of working; changes to GP and consultant contracts; equality of opportunity by gender and ethnicity; and changing expectations in society, generally, of the balance between work and family/leisure time. During the two years covered by this application, 2013-15, new features of the medical education environment will be bedding in, including greater use of ‘run-through’ training, new monitoring arrangements via Health Education England, and the new NHS Commissioning Boards. The effect of changes like these on doctors’ career dynamics and views will be of fundamental interest to policy makers. AIMS: To determine career choices of UK doctors, at regular intervals after qualification, and to study factors which influence them; to study career progression, at regular intervals, to compare it with earlier career choices, and to determine factors which have influenced change; to study movement of doctors to work outside the NHS, to work in medicine outside the UK, or leave medicine; to ascertain views of doctors about their work, training, career, working environment, and morale; to compare findings between men and women, specialties, grades, ethnic groups; and to inform medical workforce planners and decision-makers about factors which have an important influence on medical careers, medical education, and experiences of working in medicine. RESEARCH PLAN AND METHODS OF INVESTIGATION: The project is a series of longitudinal cohort studies of doctors who have graduated from UK medical schools in specific years between the mid-1970s and the present. Doctors' career intentions, career progression, and eventual destinations are recorded using postal and on-line questionnaires that are sent at intervals following graduation. Surveys are conducted according to a timetable, agreed with DH, which aims to collect data at key points in postgraduate training, notably 1, 3 and 5 years after graduation and at longer intervals thereafter. POTENTIAL IMPACT: The study will inform medical workforce policy in a number of areas. Stakeholders include Health Education England, commissioning bodies, Medical School Deans, Postgraduate Deans, and the General Medical Council. We will discuss with DH liaison an appropriate level of engagement with the devolved administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The results will be communicated to wider interest groups, including doctors themselves, via peer-reviewed publication and our website.

Lay abstract: Our work is based in the Medical Careers Research Group, University of Oxford. We survey all doctors who qualified from all medical schools in the UK, in selected years. The doctors are sent (by email and by post) questionnaires in the first year after qualification and at regular time intervals after that. The doctors are asked about their future career intentions and followed up to study their career progression. The questionnaires also invite doctors to comment to us about any aspect of their training, career choice, career plans and progression, and working in medicine. These comments reflect the current plans and preoccupations of each generation of doctors. The study includes over 62,000 doctors from 13 year-of-qualification cohorts. We have a unique body of information, and research that needs continuously updating to ensure that it remains relevant to the present and future. Qualified professionals are a vital asset to any health care system. The medical workforce needs to comprise the right number of doctors, with the right training, in the right specialties in the right places. Policy-makers need to know about doctors' career plans and what they actually do. They also need to know what doctors think about their training and work. Outcomes for assessing the work include success in publication, other dissemination, and in informing stakeholders; and success in maintaining the confidence of the doctors who willingly and honestly tell us what they do and think. We have a unique relationship with doctors currently in our studies that would be extremely hard, if possible at all, for others to establish afresh with the doctors.

Research activity codes: 8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE