Trainee doctors’ retention
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Building a supportive culture to retain doctors-in-training
IRAS ID
325979
Contact name
Wen Wang
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leicester
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Between March 2021 and March 2022, 799 Foundation Year doctors dropped out in the Midlands (dropout is defined as remaining inactive during or after training, NHS digital, 2022), this is equivalent to 15 doctors every week. On the one hand, trainees’ retention is urgent in order to address staff shortages against the backdrop that NHS England faces - a shortage of 12,000 doctors in 2022 (UK Parliament, 2022a). The situation at UHL is even more severe for two reasons: First, Leicester was a ‘hot-spot’ during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. An area with diverse population which was found to be susceptible to the virus, thus urgently needed sufficient health care provision to catch-up backlogs during the post pandemic recovery. Second, the locality of Leicester makes it less attractive to trainees to stay. It loses trainees to big cities where have more opportunities for career development, such as London, Birmingham or Nottingham (Scalan et al., 2020).
One of the key elements related to trainee doctors’ dropout is that they feel not heard and less valued (Hollis et al., 2020; Lock and Carrier, 2022; Zhao et al., 2022). It is thus urgent to unpack their perception of being heard and being valued in a complex working environment and under the current over stretched workload. The reality of being a doctor can be seen as boring, long working hours, and the system was too big to see their individual impact. The persistent bullying by senior colleagues, patients, or managers in the NHS (Wang et al., 2022a, b) can have a huge negative impact on their work experience and career decisions. It is therefore important to improve the voice mechanism for trainees to speak up; even more crucial is that leaders demonstrated a commitment to ‘listen down’.
Underpinned by signalling theory and power dynamics at workplace, the project intends to understand vertical (with trainers and senior management) and lateral communications (with peers) during trainee’s employment transition from a medical graduate to be a doctor. The study will examine employment experience of 200 Foundation Year Trainee doctors and follow their journey over two years period from entry the workplace to exit the training programmes. We will capture their experience and process of employment transition at four critical turning points: 6 weeks after start, the end of the first year; 4 months before job search, upon completion of two years training at the NHS.REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/NE/0072
Date of REC Opinion
9 May 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion