Doctors' Careers

Book excerpt: First published in 1991.The training, employment, and career movement of doctors is of fundamental concern to all those working in and administrating the National Health Service and private medicine within Britain and around the world. Doctors' Careers makes available to a wide readership, in one volume, the results of a comprehensive survey of medical choices and career progress of doctors qualifying from British medical schools during a decade, from 1974 to 1983. No other survey of this kind has been carried out over a prolonged period of time. This is a unique record of the aspirations, feelings and experiences of a very large group of doctors, during a time of considerable changes in emigration, training for general practice, and the position of women doctors. The book deals with these issues, and also the reasons for choosing and changing careers within medicine, postgraduate qualifications, internal migration of doctors within the UK, aspects of some important individual specialisms - medicine, surgery, psychiatry, and anaesthetics - and the personal opinions of doctors about their training and the career problems of British medicine. The data has important implications for medical staff planning, and this is taken up in an analysis of the employment status of doctors five years after leaving medical school.