Every three years, thousands of UK doctors fill out questionnaires about their careers, tracking who stays in the NHS, who leaves, and why. This matters because the NHS cannot function without the right number of doctors in the right specialties and locations. Workforce planners need to know whether changes to training contracts, GP roles, or working hours actually shift where doctors go—or drive them out of medicine entirely. The study follows doctors who graduated from the 1970s onward, surveying them at key points (1, 3, and 5 years after graduation, then at longer intervals) to compare their early intentions with their actual career paths. If this research succeeds, it will give Health Education England, medical schools, and the General Medical Council hard data on how policy changes affect the medical workforce. It will reveal whether women, ethnic minorities, or different specialties face unequal career progression. It will also show how many doctors move abroad, leave the NHS for private practice, or quit medicine altogether. The results are published openly and shared directly with policymakers, helping them adjust training numbers and contracts to avoid shortages or oversupply.
View original technical description
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.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know