Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Aug 28;7(8):e016823.
doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016823.

The clinical academic workforce of the future: a cross-sectional study of factors influencing career decision-making among clinical PhD students at two research-intensive UK universities

Joana Lopes  1 , Veronica Ranieri  2   3 , Trevor Lambert  4 , Chris Pugh  1 , Helen Barratt  3 , Naomi J Fulop  3 , Geraint Rees  2 , Denise Best  1
Affiliations

The clinical academic workforce of the future: a cross-sectional study of factors influencing career decision-making among clinical PhD students at two research-intensive UK universities

Joana Lopes et al. BMJ Open. .

Abstract

Objectives: To examine clinical doctoral students' demographic and training characteristics, career intentions, career preparedness and what influences them as they plan their future careers.

Design and setting: Online cross-sectional census surveys at two research-intensive medical schools in England in 2015-2016.

Participants: All medically qualified PhD students (N=523) enrolled at the University of Oxford and University College London were invited to participate. We report on data from 320 participants (54% male and 44% female), who were representative by gender of the invited population.

Main outcome measures: Career intentions.

Results: Respondents were mainly in specialty training, including close to training completion (25%, n=80), and 18% (n=57) had completed training. Half (50%, n=159) intended to pursue a clinical academic career (CAC) and 62% (n=198) were at least moderately likely to seek a clinical lectureship (CL). However, 51% (n=163) had little or no knowledge about CL posts. Those wanting a CAC tended to have the most predoctoral medical research experience (χ2 (2, N=305)=22.19, p=0.0005). Key reasons cited for not pursuing a CAC were the small number of senior academic appointments available, the difficulty of obtaining research grants and work-life balance.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that urging predoctoral clinicians to gain varied research experience while ensuring availability of opportunities, and introducing more flexible recruitment criteria for CL appointments, would foster CACs. As CL posts are often only open to those still in training, the many postdoctoral clinicians who have completed training, or nearly done so, do not currently gain the opportunity the post offers to develop as independent researchers. Better opportunities should be accompanied by enhanced career support for clinical doctoral students (eg, to increase knowledge of CLs). Finally, ways to increase the number of senior clinical academic appointments should be explored since their lack seems to significantly influence career decisions.

Keywords: academic medicine; career development; clinical academic; clinical lectureship; physician scientist.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at . JL, CP and DB declare that JL and DB are employed by, and CP directs, OUCAGS, which exists to promote and advance clinical academic careers; CP declares that his salary is, in part, paid for by Health Education England in the Thames Valley; VR and GR declare that the former works for, and the latter manages, UCL’s Academic Careers Office, which is funded by UCLH’s NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, and thus the National Institute for Health Research; no other financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years besides the support provided for the submitted work by the organisations described above under ‘funding’; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Academy of Medical Sciences. The tenure-track clinical scientist: a new career pathway to promote recruitment into clinical academic medicine. London: AMS, 2000.
    1. Academy of Medical Sciences. Clinical academic medicine in jeopardy: recommendations for change. London: AMS, 2002. https://www.acmedsci.ac.uk/viewFile/publicationDownloads/pclinaca.pdf (accessed 7 Dec 2016).
    1. Milewicz DM, Lorenz RG, Dermody TS, et al. . Rescuing the physician-scientist workforce: the time for action is now. J Clin Invest 2015;125:3742–7. 10.1172/JCI84170 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Windsor J, Searle J, Hanney R, et al. . Building a sustainable clinical academic workforce to meet the future healthcare needs of Australia and New Zealand: report from the first summit meeting. Intern Med J 2015;45:965–71. 10.1111/imj.12854 - DOI - PubMed
    1. MMC. Medically- and dentally-qualified academic staff: recommendations for training the researchers and educators of the future. Report of the Academic Careers Sub-Committee of Modernising Medical Careers and the UK Clinical Research Collaboration. London: UK: CRC, 2005. http://www.ukcrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Medically_and_Dentally-q... (accessed 7 Dec 2016).