Career choices of United Kingdom medical graduates of 1999 and 2000: questionnaire surveys

Abstract
The survey population comprised all graduates from all medical schools in the United Kingdom in 1999 and 2000. We used graduation lists from each medical school to compile our database. The doctors were sent a questionnaire towards the end of their preregistration year; non-respondents were sent a maximum of four reminders. As in earlier surveys,14 graduates were asked to state up to three choices of long term career in order of preference and to indicate whether they intended to practise medicine in the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future. We grouped career choices specified by the respondents into 14 mainstream specialties based on those defined in the Todd report.5 We used χ2 statistics and adjusted residuals to compare cohorts.1