As medical professionals, our career path is often mapped out ahead of us – a series of hurdles and hoops to leap over and through – leading us up the well-established ladder of training and role progression. This treadmill can be a comforting ‘box ticking’ exercise, with relatively little autonomy compared with other occupations. Perhaps this is why a change in my career during my senior training years felt like a giant leap into the unknown.
It would appear I was not alone in making the decision to switch careers. In 2018, only 37.7% of Foundation Level 2 doctors continued straight into specialist training programmes,1 sparking a British Medical Journal article to identify ‘why?’2 They received feedback from many junior doctors choosing to leave the NHS and discovered several themes: lack of value, loss of respect, poor training opportunities in favour of service provision, limited…
