You will have built up a relationship with your Educational Supervisor during your Foundation Programme and should have had regular meetings with them. Discuss your future plans with them and seek honest feedback from them.

Do not limit your career discussions to just your Educational Supervisor. You will build up contacts with colleagues many of whom will be experienced clinicians throughout your Foundation Programme – use them effectively. Try to discuss with them your thoughts and ideas for Specialty Training and try to get a real feel for the areas you are interested in. Every job has its good points and bad points. Try to get a sense of this from those that are actually doing the job and conduct a realistic overview of your skills and abilities and how these link into the areas that you are considering pursuing in your career.

There will be staff within your Foundation School who have an interest in the career development of Foundation Doctors and there may be a Faculty Career Lead within your Trust. This may or may not be your Educational Supervisor. You should endeavour to discuss your plans with these members of staff to help you come to a well informed decision about your future career goals.

There will also be careers support available form your Postgraduate Deanery and you will find details of this on your Deanery Website.

When it comes to planning your career it is useful to work to some form of framework that will ultimately enable you to make a well informed decision about your career and how to go about the process of planning your future in a managed way.

There are tools on this site to help you with this process which look at 4 key stages of career planning. You should review these stages and complete the on-line portfolio so you can be an active force in your career development. You can work through the interactive tools that can be found in the self-assessment area of the Career Planning section, saving your work to enable you to come back to it at a later date if you so wish.

The 4 stages of Career Planning which may help you are: