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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Why geriatric medicine?
— A survey of UK specialist trainees in geriatric medicine | | Author(s) | James Michael Fisher, Mark J Garside, Peter Brock |
| Journal title | Age and Ageing, vol 46, no 4, July 2017 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, July 2017 |
| Pages | pp 672-677 |
| Source | https://academic.oup.com/ageing |
| Keywords | Health [elderly] ; Medical care ; Postgraduate education ; Students ; Attitude ; United Kingdom. |
| Annotation | There is concern that there are insufficient numbers of geriatricians to meet the needs of the ageing population. A 2005 survey described factors that influenced why UK geriatricians had chosen to specialise in the field. Since then, UK postgraduate training has undergone a fundamental restructure. The objective of this study was to explore whether the reasons for choosing a career in geriatric medicine in the UK had changed over time, with the goal of using this knowledge to inform recruitment and training initiatives. An online survey was sent to all UK higher medical trainees in geriatric medicine, in which questions that produced categorical data were analysed with simple descriptive statistics. For the questions that produced free-text responses, an inductive, iterative approach to analysis, in keeping with the principles of framework analysis, was employed. Out of 641 eligible respondents, 269 responses were received. Compared with the previous survey, a substantially larger number of respondents regarded geriatric medicine to be their first-choice speciality and a smaller number regretted their career decision. A greater number chose geriatric medicine early in their medical careers. Commitments to the general medical rota and the burden of service provision were considered important downsides to the speciality. There are reasons to be optimistic about recruitment to geriatric medicine. Future attempts to drive up recruitment might legitimately focus on the role of the medical registrar and perceptions that geriatricians shoulder a disproportionate burden of service commitments and obligations to the acute medical take. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-170728231 A |
| Classmark | CC: LK: V7P: XN: DP: 8 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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