e001 - How can we make a consultant post more appealing to radiology trainees?

[4323294] How can we make a consultant post more appealing to radiology trainees?

Authors: Siane Davies ¹, Christopher Cook ²

Affilliations: University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust¹, Weston General Hospital²

Learning objectives:
We often hear there are either no or few applicants for Consultant Radiology posts in the UK.
This survey sought to gain information from UK Radiology trainees which criteria they think are most important factors in determining which consultant post they would consider applying for.

Background:
We describe findings of an email based survey of radiology trainees performed using a well known publically available electronic survey engine.
Questions were asked concerning issues of professional interest, departmental size, on-call rota frequency, personal factors, administrative time, flexible working, and potential for private work. For question resume and full survey see Appendices 1 and 2 (full text).
The questionnaire was sent to all trainees in the South and South West UK. There are a variable number of trainees within this geographical area; the total in the region of 110 doctors. We received 46 replies

Findings and procedure details:
These are best demonstrated on bar chart 1 and charts 1-4.
The most important factors were friendly colleagues, posts with sub-speciality interest, low frequency on call and protected administration time.
These factors are perhaps what senior consultants might also desire in their own post.


Conclusion:
This data indicates the most important factors sought by the trainees surveyed for a potential consultant post are friendly colleagues, ability to perform sub-speciality interest, a low frequency of on call (1 in 12 or less), and protected administration time. This should be considered at time of job advertisement, and during the job planning process.