Competition ratios for different specialties and the effect of gender and immigration status

摘要

Some specialties have always been very competitive. Careers advice for medical students and junior doctors is often patchy. The Medical Schools Council reported ‘an urgent need’ for medical schools to provide more comprehensive information regarding careers. Competition ratios have been published, but these were only to be found in obscure human resources publications until Shelley Heard's recent paper in the BMJ Career Focus. None of these previous studies mentioned the immigration status of applicants, or the extreme gender differences in applications for different specialties.