Sunday 26th September

Pregnant women recreating Charles Ebbet's iconic photo 'New York Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam'. The aim of the photo was help highlight the high rates of mortality amongst pregnant women who die every year in developing countries.

The topic which everyone is talking about at the moment amongst the 5th year medical students is that of job applications and securing a place on the UK Foundation Programme after graduation. According to early estimates it seems as if this year there is going to be a shortfall in places for the first time. The result of telling applicants this information is that people seem to be very anxious all of a sudden about what was previously considered a given, that on graduating from medicine all doctors would have a job. There have been angry letters from concerned students, reassurances from the professional bodies such as the BMA and lots of conversations had about this years applications process.

The application form is relatively simple, students apply to a foundation school eg ‘Scotland’, and then jobs within the region to which they apply. The application forms are scored out of 100, based on a combination of academic competencies and ‘essay-based questions’. These questions make up half of the application and answering the questions well is extremely important. I’m pretty sure though that given enough time and enough thought, it should be possible to score well on these questions.

Although the prospect of having unemployed doctors at the end of their medical training seems like a total waste of talent and money, the situation is the same for many UK university graduates at the current time and relatively, medical students are still lucky in the sense that most graduates from medicine will still have jobs in 2011. Primary school teachers have to put of with competition ratios in the region of 17 applicants per job and people are having to leave the UK to find work. It will be interesting come November this year to find out the exact number of applicants and whether or not there will be a shortfall in job numbers, but until then all I can do is take as much time and care as possible to fill in the application form and score highly on the essay based questions.