Career plans and views of trainees in the Academic Clinical Fellowship Programme in England

Figures & data

Table

Practice points

Doctors considering a clinical academic career are most attracted by the prospect of variety, working in an intellectual environment and the challenge of research. Doctors would be discouraged from continuing to follow an academic career by difficulty in obtaining research grants; competing pressures from research, teaching and service work; and loss of pay parity with NHS clinical colleagues.

Figure 1. Factors affecting specialty choice: highly rated factors.

Table 1.  Career intentions: type of post

In your long-term career, do you intend mainly to work in:	Total (n = 102)^a		Men (n = 57)		Women (n = 43)
Clinical academic posts	64	(63%)	35	(61%)	28	(65%)
Clinical service posts with some teaching and research	22	(22%)	11	(19%)	10	(23%)
Clinical service posts with some research	3	(3%)	2	(4%)	1	(2%)
Clinical service posts with some teaching	1	(1%)	1	(2%)	0	(0%)
Clinical service posts without teaching or research	0	(0%)	0	(0%)	0	(0%)
Undecided	12	(12%)	8	(14%)	4	(9%)

Note: ^aTwo responders did not specify whether male or female.

Figure 2. Factors influencing the decision to undertake an academic career.

Figure 3. Factors which might dissuade responders from continuing in an academic career in the long term.

Figure 4. Factors affecting the decision to undertake a specific ACF programme.