Specialist medical training programmes should retain some flexibility to help trainee doctors make the right career choices, a study claims.

Researchers from the University of Oxford set out to compare doctors’ early career choices with their eventual career destinations.

They compared the extent to which doctors’ choices of specialties at one, three, and five years after graduation corresponded to career destinations 10 years after graduation.

They found that, 10 years after graduating, almost half of doctors were working in a specialty different from the one chosen in their first year after graduation and about a quarter were working in a specialty different from their year three choice.

The study, on bmj.com, also suggests that changes to postgraduate medical training mean that junior doctors are making their career choices sooner than in the past.

This concern was first highlighted by the Tooke report in 2008, which suggested that medical education and Modernising Medical Careers encourages foundation trainees to make career choices when many are not ready to make such commitments.

Some respondents commented about an increasing lack of flexibility, as they saw it, in applying for specialty training, while some expressed concerns about having only one lifetime opportunity to succeed in getting on to a training programme for their chosen specialty.

The authors conclude that a two point entry to specialty training programmes would alleviate this problem by allowing those who have made early, definite choices to progress quickly into their chosen specialty, while recognising the need for flexibility for those who choose later.

Commenting on the research, Jeremy Brown, a senior lecturer at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, said: “Specialty programmes need to identify ways of supporting those trainees who need time and experience in the postgraduate setting to make a firm commitment that will match their eventual career destination.”

Read the full study.