Any other medic mums nervously waiting for F1 allocation?

[PiggyPokkyFool]

DD1 was told they should be through at 7.30am and is on wards for 10 so is nervously waiting and hoping it will not be much longer.
Pretty crazy they could be sent anywhere based on a lottery.
Anyone else waiting and fancy keeping me company?

Not everyone played safe. The two examples we have on this thread - HostessTrolley and ProdessorLayton's DDs - both opted for the most competitive choice as #1 and both got their top choice. 'Someone has to get it' is a good mindset'. Probably a good mindset for a doctor too - not necessarily playing safe.

mumsneedwine this is not what the document says. Happy to be corrected but I can't see where you get the figures from to make that assertion (that 5% ended up with 15th choice or below).

Apologies ProfessorLayton!

My d is now contemplating options for sub deanery and job.

She's being advised by the resident doctors she's on placement with to try for an F1 job in a smaller hospital and F2 in a bigger hospital, the rationale being that F1s in bigger hospitals are more 'protected', less likely to work nights etc and be 'lost in the noise' which makes the step up to F2 where they're 'expected to know much' more of a culture shock. They're telling her that as an F1 in a smaller hospital she'd get more exposure which would help her to be better prepared for F2.

Does this sound accurate/reasonable at all?

HostessTrolley I think it all comes out in the wash. I think it makes more sense to look at the actual specialties rather than getting wrapped up in size of hospital. Stick to the main event.

Thanks for your reply. Of course she'll look closely at specialties once they get their 'area' and find out what jobs are available. She was just pondering on conversations on placement. She's on a five week 'shadow the F1s' placement - there's probably a fancy name but that's essentially what they're doing - and she does have some weekends, nights and on calls in the mix.

My point was that the content of the rotations should probably be the priority rather than trying to add the complication of large/ small hospital. That would probably be a mistake.

There are certainly quite a few rule changes which get pinged in from time to time. But any medical student who really thinks their final grade is irrelevant is playing a very short game, and that's not clever. It matters for all sorts of reasons going forward.

Looking at the 2025 allocation stats, they're strikingly similar to the stats from the old system with the single exception of first and second preference. I wonder if it's really worth all the anxiety for the students, just to shift a few 'lower scorers' (inverted commas intentional, before someone tells me the applications aren't actually scored....) to London deaneries and a few 'higher scorers' to the regions?

@Pleasestopthebunfight It might also be worth remembering that the figures will include quite a high number of F1s coming in from overseas. In the past they seem to have filled in gaps. The head of a Penang medical school once told me that they could usually get their students somewhere but never London. I understand that they now have equal consideration with UK graduates. I suspect their medical schools will give them more guidance as to how to play it. Try London and some safe options perhaps, if they want to avoid "the Gulag".

@HostessTrolley HostessTrolley, it is now worth thinking ahead. Things have changed, so DDs idea that she would pick really busy rotations in areas she is interested in and then take an F3 proved to be wrong. (It was logical in that through medical school she was taught by Clinical Teaching Fellows who had done precisely that.) F3 jobs are now open to full international competition and (anecdote as NHS do not keep data) attracting huge numbers of applicants. Someone else was given the advice to ensure that their fourth and fifth rotations were quieter (community and psych - neither of which DD did) so that they can have a strong stab at the specialist exams during F2.

I would hate to disagree with Auchencar who seems to have access to NHS thinking, which may help explain why the NHS seems to care so little about retaining UK medical school graduates. (The alternative might be that they are a bored housewife becoming a keyboard warrior whilst sipping gins and tonics at a Surrey golf club.)

However:

1. DD's intercalation offered funding for about five PhD's straight after the intercalation. As an external student required to return to her home medical school, she was ineligible, but had she been an internal Imperial student or at somewhere more flexible she could have started F1 with an intercalation. I assume similar happens on other intercalations. So I don't think it is correct that say people always finish F2 before a PhD. I assume they want to catch them whilst their knowledge is fresh.
2. It is very very common for final year students to chose the area they are are already in, for one of their five choices. They probably have existing accommodation or people to share with, they will know the hospitals and where they would pick for their rotations. The two on this thread who picked London were already studying in London so it is easier to stay. I am not sure if Auchencar is aware, but finding affordable accomodation in London if you don't already have somewhere or a flat share you can join can be a nightmare, and genuinely offputting. I think it is a bit insensitive to suggest that others are less ambitious. FWIW DD, who grew up in central London, had always intended to study outside London and to then return for F1. Unfortunately for 18 months from the start of the first lockdown and during the whole of her intercalation to the start of fourth year she was stuck in her childhood bedroom and she wanted a change. I actually think that the ability to keep an eye on your own welfare is a key skill in the NHS and in other high pressured careers. DD and her friends, who mainly headed for the Celtic nations, seem to be having a great time. Bright, level headed work hard, play hard outdoorsy types, in hard to recruit areas. If the NHS were interested in having a pipeline of good home grown doctors happy to fill positions in out of the way areas, they really need to ensure that ANY deanery can provide a launch pad for a successful career. Different perhaps for academic doctors, but the NHS is under such strain in so many areas that there is plenty of room for good practical and experienced consultants whose skill set, alongside patient care, is angled towards management and motivating and retaining staff.

I would hate to disagree with Auchencar who seems to have access to NHS thinking, which may help explain why the NHS seems to care so little about retaining UK medical school graduates. (The alternative might be that they are a bored housewife becoming a keyboard warrior whilst sipping gins and tonics at a Surrey golf club.)

Needmoresleep please do stop being so puerile and making endless personal attacks on anyone who doesn't parrot your tracts. I have never been a gin drinker in the whole of my life and I'm not a member of a Surrey golf club (although out of curiosity, why does golf come in for more of your ire?).

My input on the choice of London rotations may or may not be useful. But I should be able to type it without having childish comments lobbed my way.

1. DD's intercalation offered funding for about five PhD's straight after the intercalation. As an external student required to return to her home medical school, she was ineligible, but had she been an internal Imperial student or at somewhere more flexible she could have started F1 with an intercalation. I assume similar happens on other intercalations. So I don't think it is correct that say people always finish F2 before a PhD. I assume they want to catch them whilst their knowledge is fresh.

Please note that I didn't use the word always.

It is very very common for final year students to chose the area they are are already in, for one of their five choices. They probably have existing accommodation or people to share with, they will know the hospitals and where they would pick for their rotations. The two on this thread who picked London were already studying in London so it is easier to stay. I am not sure if Auchencar is aware, but finding affordable accomodation in London if you don't already have somewhere or a flat share you can join can be a nightmare, and genuinely offputting. I think it is a bit insensitive to suggest that others are less ambitious. FWIW DD, who grew up in central London, had always intended to study outside London and to then return for F1. Unfortunately for 18 months from the start of the first lockdown and during the whole of her intercalation to the start of fourth year she was stuck in her childhood bedroom and she wanted a change. I actually think that the ability to keep an eye on your own welfare is a key skill in the NHS and in other high pressured careers. DD and her friends, who mainly headed for the Celtic nations, seem to be having a great time. Bright, level headed work hard, play hard outdoorsy types, in hard to recruit areas. If the NHS were interested in having a pipeline of good home grown doctors happy to fill positions in out of the way areas, they really need to ensure that ANY deanery can provide a launch pad for a successful career. Different perhaps for academic doctors, but the NHS is under such strain in so many areas that there is plenty of room for good practical and experienced consultants whose skill set, alongside patient care, is angled towards management and motivating and retaining staff.

Arguably the insensitivity comes from a landlord of multiple London properties when addressing the parent of DC who have to beggar themselves to rent in London.

For further info, it's been a fact for very many years that Oxford and Cambridge fly in the face of the usual tendency to stay local and have flocked to London en masse for the foundation years.

Yes. And they go with their friends, continuing the approach where they used to do clinical years in London. Oxford is only 80 minutes by coach from London and Oxford students are very used to commuting to London for parties. Plenty too will have London/SE parents or parents who can afford to subsidise their rent.

If you can't see the difference between that and the kid from Dundee who may only have visited London once on a school trip and who would not know where to start looking, and you might need to get out more.

Off topic but the weird thing is that if I were to sell my London properties, which I maintain well and for which I charge a fair rent, it would be young doctors and other young professionals who would be complaining about the shortage of rental property in London. As is it I, along with many landlords, am reducing my portfolio significantly. Something that should please the MN socialists, sitting in their nice detached houses. Until their DC have a problem renting and they end up having to fork out to help young Jonny with a deposit instead.

I am genuinely interested in what your role is with the health sector. It would enable me and others to be able to weigh up the accuracy of your assertions. I assume you are not a bored housewife who simply enjoys going on the internet to take a pop at others, so that was a joke. I did think you might be Peterenas revisited but despite his pomp he was kind.

My ex London school students do not return to London. Too pricey. Of the current F2s I am still in contact with, 3 are in West Country, 2 in N West deanery and one in Aus already. Of those 6 all will probably be down under in August as no one has got a job yet.

2 are ex Oxbridge.

London seems to attract the ex private school doctors who can afford a good standard of living there. Others realise they'll be poor and could live much nicer lives elsewhere.

Today there are a lot of them on beaches in the S West ☀️

Yes. After six years of study including 18 months lockdown at home DD was ready to be working and independent. If she had returned to London she would have had to have lived at home as it would not have been worth paying rent elsewhere.

I get that the career pathway is easier if you go to London but that does not make sense. The really hard to recruit jobs are in places like Blackpool, or more remote parts of Wales or Scotland. Unlike Auchencar, some people genuinely prefer to live outside London. If the same support could be given in those places, doctors who like living in hard to recruit places could stay and spend their careers there. As it is training places are going unfilled because our Oxbridge/London high flyers are not queueing up to work there and those there are not able to put together the portfolios that would enable them to apply.

My DC went to a school were almost 50% went on to Oxbridge, several each year for medicine. DD could absolutely confirm that there were plenty at her medical school and in her deanery who are just as talented. When you are on holiday and are admitted to A&E you don't care if your doctor won prizes in some Bangkok competition. You want them to be competent and dedicated. Most of all you don't want to be waiting for hours because unfilled posts can't treat patients.

I don't thing we can win the argument with Auchencar. Which is why I am so interested in their role. It might explain why the NHS is in the state it is in. Again, if your GP in Northern Ireland suspects that you have MS or MND, it is two years before your urgent referral will turn into an appointment. Largely because those London F1s an F2s who get the training numbers won't apply for jobs there, preferring to stay in research and teaching hospitals in London and the South East. I don't think this is right, but clearly others are not seeing a problem.

Just wanted to add that although my dd is at imperial and is happy to be staying in London, she's definitely not from private school/rich family. We've grafted to help her meet her costs for 6 years (and her siblings before her) and she's tutored throughout to earn some £, in addition to very much holding her own on the course. She's lucky that her partner works in London and they live together so share costs, but they need to move as their housemate is leaving London and finding something else affordable on F1 pay rather than a bit of student finance with bank of mum and dad topups is going to be a challenge - they certainly won't be staying in Hammersmith...

London seems to attract the ex private school doctors who can afford a good standard of living there. Others realise they'll be poor and could live much nicer lives elsewhere

What a lot of complete nonsense you talk mumsneedwine, based on a complete lack of familiarity with anyone working in London as a foundation doctor. I think it's become clear over the threads that you struggle badly with statistics but please don't make ignorant assertions about clever young people who happen to be ambitious and want to maintain their social life so apply/ applied to London. Many do that/ did that knowing that they'll have to scrape by in less than pleasant flats (due to grasping landlords who really should be ashamed at the mismatch between rent and living conditions). But scrappy overpriced flats are made more bearable if sharing with people you like and these are the medics who are playing the longer game, so put up with not living on the beach in the early years. It's insulting to try to chuck out the rich slur when it couldn't be further from the truth. Of course there will be some private school kids in London but hitherto they've tended to be ones who also happened to be hard working and bright.

That said, aren't all the medics in the SW so hard at work that they can't take any time off work even for education and are basically running the RD&E and Musgrove single handedly?

I think what we're seeing again is the richer kids who've been sheltered from the grittier side of life wanting a cushier life right now - instant gratification - and so opt for places where their foundation years can be spent having a better quality of life. And then their parents come on MN and rail against the inequity of competition for training places and JCF positions and make it super clear that their DC expect them despite not having put in the effort to complete research/ present at conferences etc. These are the private school and/ or rich kids if you don't mind my saying. The mindset shouts it loud and clear. Entitled or what?

These threads need an injection of common sense. So far, the consultants - most of whom were accused of faking being consultants due to being cynical about the suitability for progression of the we-want-an-easy-life ('work life balance') kids - have been pretty much the only breath of fresh air.

Needmoresleep you might be interested in a lot of things but a) I'm entitled to my privacy and b) you've been outrageously rude to so many consultants on this thread as well as to myself I'm afraid I've no intention of giving you info unless I choose to. I have to say that your impression of Oxford students nipping down to London for parties is based on a very Eton/ Harrow/ Westminster/ St Paul's type of student. Most Oxford students maintain a very adequate social life in Oxford and almost never go down to London.

Yes. And they go with their friends, continuing the approach where they used to do clinical years in London. Oxford is only 80 minutes by coach from London and Oxford students are very used to commuting to London for parties. Plenty too will have London/SE parents or parents who can afford to subsidise their rent

Just a correction. Overwhelmingly in recent years, those who went to London for the clinical years did so because Oxford told them to push off. Very occasionally it was voluntary but yes - emphasis on very.

My ex London school students do not return to London. Too pricey. Of the current F2s I am still in contact with, 3 are in West Country, 2 in N West deanery and one in Aus already. Of those 6 all will probably be down under in August as no one has got a job yet

Given how much emphasis you place on how underprivileged each and every one of your students are - the ones that you yourself have helped into medical school - I'm astonished that these hardworking, ambitious and clearly successful young people don't go back to live at home in London even if that means sharing a room with a sibling rather than pay extra rent to go to regional deaneries. The other day you said that all the Oxford graduates from your school have stayed in Oxford (bucking the Oxford Medical School trend). So you're asking us to believe that they'd prefer to pay eye-watering Oxford rents rather than do what the vast majority of their peers do and go to London, where they all have at least a bed available. Forgive me for not being able to completely buy into all of what you say - but there's so much contradiction between the various posts and so much lack of internal logic that I really am having problems. I think your justification (I haven't checked back) was that they grew up in London so just didn't fancy it..... I mean, fair enough but....

Today there are a lot of them on beaches in the S West ☀️

I was on one of the most popular beaches near Exeter on Monday and Tuesday this week and didn't see a single person who could possibly pass for an F1 or 2. The average age was around 80 with very few exceptions (myself and two or three others and that was it).

(That's even without your protestations that the foundation doctors are single handedly running NHS SW and don't get even an afternoon off ever, as I've already pointed out. This is purely for emphasis).

I don't know if this helps and I can only speak from an admin point of view. At my trust (South East) F1s do not and have never worked nights, rotas are built with a 75% allowance for teaching sessions (taking into account rest days, on calls and annual leave. And personal development days can be given as 2 hours per week, 8 hours every 2 weeks or one day a month and should also be scheduled in advance on the rota 😊

I get that the career pathway is easier if you go to London but that does not make sense. The really hard to recruit jobs are in places like Blackpool, or more remote parts of Wales or Scotland. Unlike Auchencar, some people genuinely prefer to live outside London. If the same support could be given in those places, doctors who like living in hard to recruit places could stay and spend their careers there. As it is training places are going unfilled because our Oxbridge/London high flyers are not queueing up to work there and those there are not able to put together the portfolios that would enable them to apply

Apologies, I'm reading the thread backwards.

In what way do you assume the career pathway is 'easier if you go to London'? It's more about the fact that hitherto the higher fliers have gone to London, not to do with London itself being a golden ticket.

The second point is that those outside London have every opportunity to put together portfolios. For goodness sake just shake off the lassitude and do it. Stop making excuses and stop expecting everything to be handed to you on a plate.

I for one - as a patient - am glad that we still have a merit based system. That doesn't mean that all doctors are good because very clearly some are utterly duff, but you know - at least the system tries to filter.

Also, sorry completely forgot if they aren't getting this time they need to shout it from the rooftops, tell the education centre, exception report etc!

I know. DD has a friend in the SE.

In contrast DD worked nights on every rotation as an F1. Two of them busy, busy nights in a City centre hospital in a very deprived area. On her first rotation she had six deaths in a single night, luckily all "expected". And on another the Registrar did not show up so the hospital was left under the charge of an F2 and two F1s. She was supposed have an appraisal from her consultant but the consultant was busy it had to be done by phone. The health service is so stretched that her current consultant is on call one in four, and the Deanery cannot afford to move them on to the "English" contract, so they are still on the 2002 one. No personal development days, on-line training in their own time, and until recently they were paid £5 less than their English peers. Even so patients with urgent referrals where early treatment would be really effective, wait two years to be seen.

No complaints. DD is getting good hands-on experience, and plenty of responsibility. She picked her rotations because they would be busy and interesting. However her game plan, which was to spend two years gaining solid experience and then work an F3 contract (Clinical Teaching Fellow or similar) where she could focus on her training application, has come to nothing. The level of competition caused by opening up entry level jobs to worldwide competition means that neither she or her peers are likely to get anything.

My point is that you have an odd mix.

Allocations are carried out UK wide, with some being allocated, even though terms and conditions very across the UK.

Approval to apply for training places is UK wide and open to full international competition. No leeway is given to those who have not been given additional training time. So DD and her peers will be expected to be able to compete against a candidate who has paid a small fortune to a training school in India to help them prepare their application, including the very full CV of research and achievements. This is not a level playing field. In the end it is the patient who suffers. The reason DDs consultant is on call one in four, is that eight out of 16 training places in that speciality are vacant. If you are a London high flyer or an ambitious doctor from overseas wanting UK training on their CV you might not apply to somewhere where the pay is lower and the workload high. Better wait until a job comes up at a well-known research-heavy teaching hospital or stay in your home country.

The argument that high flyers go to London and therefore those in London are high flyers seems circular. London has always attracted the ambitious. However at the end of the day the NHS needs consultants across the country. And plenty of talented young doctors do not choose to go to London for a variety of reasons. DD got her first pick of rotation, so it is reasonable to assume that her peers would have had similar points, and thus able to select where they went. 16 out of 18 studied at the local medical school (one was an IMG) and will have actively chosen to stay at home. They were a strong cohort. They should be able to stay, take up the training places within that deanery and work their way up the ranks. Yet because of the changes in immigration law the career path is blocked and all but 2 expect to have to go to Australia, whilst those training places remain unfilled.