UKFPO have released the data detailing the first-choice applications to each foundation school . I have posted these here.  The figures for 2009 are for the vacancies advertised during the application period, not the final number of jobs available after many posts were removed from several foundation schools. The question for many final-year students around the country wondering which foundation school to apply to in the Autumn is, how much do past competition ratios predict future competition ratios? Competition varies depending on which schools other applicants list as their first choice, but as any psychiatrist will tell you, past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour.

It’s safe to say that South Thames will continue to be oversubscribed, especially with the changes in allocations this year. Applicants accepted to the Foundation School will no longer have to rank 808 jobs in order of preference. Instead they will go through a two-stage process where they will first rank  three groups within the Foundation School and be allocated to one of these groups based on score, then rank around 270 jobs within the region. This seems like a step forward as long as the programmes are split fairly between the three areas. The groups will be divided partially on the basis on geography, and partially on the basis of administering similar programmes. Specifically, each programme group will contain similar numbers of teaching hospital programmes and specialty programmes. This is similar to Birmingham Medical School’s plan for its future clinical undergraduate course when the 2014 Review comes in, splitting each year of medicine into three geographical areas.

It is difficult to extrapolate to next year from three year’s worth of figures, especially with changes being made to the boundaries of foundation schools. Birmingham, Staffordshire and Shropshire is amicably splitting into Birmingham Foundation School and Keele (Staffordshire and Shropshire) Foundation School. This is likely to increase applications to Birmingham as students wanting to stay within or near to West Midlands county were more likely to apply to Black Country so that they would definitely be working in Wolverhampton, Sandwell or Dudley. In previous years, several applicants from BIrmingham Medical School planning to work within Birmingham have ended up in the infamous Mid Staffordshire General Hospital in Stafford or University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent, which is Keele Medical School’s main teaching hospital. I only know one person who is planning to commute from near the student area of South Birmingham to Stafford every day to work, and his life is not going to be as easy as it could be. Pre-UKFPO, Staffordshire & Shropshire was one foundation school, but was merged with Birmingham due to under-filling, so it will be interesting to see if this the case once more. Perhaps with Keele having now produced graduates for several years they will be more fond of the area.

Due to the chronic underfilling of North Yorkshire and East Coast, from 2010 it will be merging with West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire to form Yorkshire and the Humber. This could potentially have a negative effect on recruitment if applicants are more hesitant to apply as they are less sure of the geographical area in which they will be working.  Students at Sheffield Medical School are especially unhappy about this as they are no longer sure of a job in South Yorkshire. The main carrot for applying to North Yorkshire is that every single job is band 1B. Many Hull York Medical School students do apply to their home Foundation School of North Yorkshire and East Coast.

- Dom

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 10:11 am and is filed under Medical Students. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.