Career choices of junior doctors: is the physician an endangered species?

Abstract

-There are increasing concerns regarding the recruitment and retention within general medicine. National surveys were conducted among foundation year 2 doctors (FY2), year 1 and year 2 core medical trainees (CT1 and CT2) and medical registrars (StR/ST3+) exploring their enjoyment of medicine, overall satisfaction, career aspirations, influencing factors and perceptions of the medical registrar. The results highlight that many doctors at the FY2, CT1 and CT2 levels are being deterred from general medicine by the perceived unmanageable workload and poor work-life balance of the medical registrar. Medical registrars themselves are less satisfied in general internal medicine than they are in their main specialties. Therefore, priority needs to be placed on clarifying the roles, and improving the morale, of medical registrars. If current trends persist, these will have a significant impact on patient safety, patient care and workforce planning.

On the lesser importance of internal medicine: is it right to forget about it?

“…Moreover, young people are not satisfied with their professional career choice and further internal medicine practice. [1][2][3] In fact, the decision regarding internal medicine specialty stems from the will to help patients and to have direct contact with them. Nevertheless, a resident of internal medicine is faced with the sad reality, where the time spent with patients is dramatically shortened due to bureaucracy, number of declarations, paperwork, signatures and other nonmedical procedures.…”

“…4 1 Lack of candidates to be employed at internal medicine departments. 2 A decreased number of physicians will lead to a deterioration of population health. 3 A decrease in the number of hospital beds and general internal medicine departments stemming from simple calculations used by health care facility managers.…”

“…2 In the previous system, a 2-step internal medicine specialty was compulsory prior to obtaining subspecialty. 3 Diminishing the role of internal medicine in the specialty system-in case of new single -step specialties (including endocrinology) the internal medicine learning outcomes are not evaluated.…”

“…1 Definite support for the physicians in the outpatient health care system, which will decrease the number of hospital referrals. 2 In face of a drastic increase of needs in internal medicine hospital health care, it is necessary to re calculate internal medicine procedures. This will strengthen the departments' position and will help improve the situation at hospital Emergency Room and Accident and Emergency Departments.…”

From the editor

“…1 This carefully researched publication is based on the findings of the RCP's Medical Workforce Unit (MWU) -parts of which are published in this issue 2 and other parts will appear in future issues of Clinical Medicine.…”