Career Planning using Workforce Statistics
Medical Careers talked to Mike Wilson, Careers Lead for the
Northern Deanery and careers advisor at Newcastle University, about
using workforce information to aid career planning.
NB: you can also view our videos
on You-Tube.
Using this video Medical
Careers is setting out to increase the
knowledge, and use of information about trends and forecasts of
future staff numbers prepared within the NHS. They are not new and
are freely available to users of the site. But from our research we
know that they are not widely used.
Mike answers our questions about workforce
information. Such as: What are the benefits for me and how reliable
and useful is the information? He also tackles the practical
issues like: How do I use the data and where can I find it? Mike is
not a statistician and his approach is about practical applicaion
in career planning. We hope you find the approach of the video
helpful.
The recent Collins Report into the Foundation
programme also highlighted the importance of workforce statistics
in medical career planning and noted:
“The challenge which remains is how best to help
trainees to manage their career expectations against realistic
opportunities and the needs of the service, while at the same time
encouraging them in their overall aspirations. Guidance is required
in defining best practice in the provision of careers information
and advice, and obtaining key workforce data collated to help
trainees to make early and wise decisions regarding their long-term
careers”
Workforce statistics is essentially information about areas
of medicine that are growing, contracting or remain stable. It
should also be borne in mind that a medical career is very much a
service driven role. That essentially means that opportunity will
be highest in areas that require it. For example there is a great
emphasis on primary care at present and this will remain over the
coming years. You may already be aware of this but it is worth
re-iterating that it is envisaged that over 50% of medical
graduates will be required to train as GPs. It is information such
as this that is tied up in the broader area that we call workforce
statistics. All areas of employment rely on this workforce
information and it is sometimes referred to as LMI or Labour Market
Information.
The best place to access the reports is on this
site in the 'information pages for each specialty' as an example
here is the page for General Practice. There is individual data for
each specialty. We link to the latest workforce statistics
information; they have last been updated by the Centre for
Workforce Information in August 2011.
BMJ Articles:
Specialty Training Places - written by Dr Alison Carr, Dr
Melanie Jones and Dr Jane Montgomery - December 2010
Specialty training at ST1 and CT1 in England -written by Alison
Carr, Elaine Sullivan, Steve Buggle, Patricia Hamilton - November
2011
