Gender, ethnicity and graduate status, and junior doctors’ self-reported preparedness for clinical practice: national questionnaire surveys

Abstract

Objectives Medical schools need to ensure that graduates feel well prepared for their first medical job. Our objective was to report on differences in junior doctors’ self-reported preparedness for work according to gender, ethnicity and graduate status. Design Postal and electronic questionnaires. Setting UK. Participants Medical graduates of 2008 and 2009, from all UK medical schools, one year after graduation. Main outcome measures The main outcome measure was the doctors’ level of agreement with the statement that ‘ My experience at medical school prepared me well for the jobs I have undertaken so far’, to which respondents were asked to reply on a scale from ‘ strongly agree’ to ‘ strongly disagree’. Results Women were slightly less likely than men to agree that they felt well prepared for work (50% of women agreed or strongly agreed vs. 54% of men), independently of medical school, ethnicity, graduate entry status and intercalated degree status, although they were no more likely than men to regard lack of preparedness as having been a problem for them. Adjusting for the other subgroup differences, non-white respondents were less likely to report feeling well prepared than white (44% vs. 54%), and were more likely to indicate that lack of preparedness was a problem (30% non-white vs. 24% white). There were also some gender and ethnic differences in preparedness for specific areas of work. Conclusions The identified gender and ethnic differences need to be further explored to determine whether they are due to differences in self-confidence or in actual preparedness.