ArticleMedical teacher2023
How do foundation year and internship experience shape doctors' career intentions and decisions? A meta-ethnography.
Article in Medical teacher, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Factors Influencing an Early Career Choice of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Among Chinese Medical Students: An Exploratory Survey.Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry · 2026Article
- Internship Learning Experiences, Challenges, and Resource Preferences Among Junior Doctors in Two Malaysian Tertiary Hospitals: A Pilot Study on the Preliminary Validation of a Multifaceted Questionnaire.Advances in medical education and practice · 2026Article
- Unlocking student potential through engagement: exploring the learning outcomes and career intentions of medical students transferring from junior colleges to undergraduate universities in China.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Entrustable professional activity use in emergency medicine: A scoping review.AEM education and training · 2025Article
- Comfortable knowing little about lymphoedema? A qualitative study of medical interns in Australia.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Evaluating the importance of rural internships to subsequent medical workforce distribution outcomes: an Australian cohort study.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Navigating Careers in Ayurveda: A Comprehensive Needs Assessment for Introducing a Career Guidance Module.Cureus · 2024Article
- Exploring recent trends (2014-21) in preferencing and accepting Queensland medical internships in rural hospitals.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- The influence of internship training experience on Kenyan and Ugandan doctors' career intentions and decisions: a qualitative study.Global health action · 2023Article
- Understanding Meta-Ethnography in Health Professions Education Research.Journal of graduate medical education · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeFoundation years or internships are an important period for junior doctors to apply their knowledge and gain clinical competency. Experiences gained during the foundation years or internships are likely to inform newly qualified doctors' opinions about how they want to continue their career. We aimed to understand how medical doctors' internship experiences influence their career intention/decision.
methodsWe conducted qualitative evidence synthesis using meta-ethnography. We searched six electronic bibliographic databases for papers published between 2000-2020 and included papers exploring how foundation years or internship experiences shape doctors' career intention/decisions, including in relation to migration, public/private/dual practice preference, rural/urban preference, and specialty choice. We used the GRADE-CERQual framework to rate confidence in review findings.
resultsWe examined 23 papers out of 6085 citations screened. We abstracted three high-level inter-related themes across 14 conceptual categories: (1) Deciding the personal best fit both clinically and in general (which option is 'more me'?) through hands-on and real-life experiences (2) Exploring, experiencing and witnessing workplace norms; and (3) Worrying about the future in terms of job market policies, future training and professional development opportunities. Confidence in findings varied but was rated high in 8 conceptual categories.
conclusionsOur meta-ethnographic review revealed a range of ways in which internship experience shapes medical doctors' career intentions/decisions allowing us to produce a broad conceptual model of this phenomenon. The results highlight the importance of ensuring sufficient, positive and inspiring clinical exposure, improving workplace environment, relationship and culture, refraining from undermining specific specialities and communicating contractual and job market policies early on to young doctors, in order to attract doctors to less popular specialties or work locations where they are most needed. We propose our conceptual model should be further tested in new research across a range of contexts.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.