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Selection for specialty training

November 2006
The restructuring of medical education through Modernising Medical Careers has introduced the foundation training programme, for newly graduated doctors, and run-through specialty training. 2007 will see the first cohort of doctors completing the full foundation training programme and entering specialty training, for which a new selection process is being developed.

Run-through training means the selection point for entry moves from a situation where doctors would have had several years’ training and experience in a specialty, to a point where all doctors are deemed to have reached the same level of competence with no discriminating difference between them – the outcome of foundation training.

The report looks at selection for specialty training in two parts. Part 1 highlights the challenges faced in producing a selection system for entry to specialist training, including:

• selection prior to entry to specialty training
• selecting potential
• selecting out
• the choices that trainees make
• diversity

Part 2 provides an overview of different selection tools, what they can do and the relative merits of their use in selection for specialty training, including:

• application forms, interests and references
• interviews
• biographical data
• mental ability and aptitude tests
• skill and knowledge tests
• personality tests

This BMA report is intended to inform doctors, regulators and education deliverers – particularly those charged with setting standards for entry and those designing the selection system – in order that a selection system is produced based on fairness and flexibility and on clear, uniform and UK-wide principles.