Newly Qualified Doctors’ Views of Medical School Training and Its Adequacy in Making Them “Fit for Purpose” as First Year Doctors

Aim: To assess whether the medical graduates from one medical school felt “fit for purpose” to work as intern doctors in the Health Service in Ireland. In the early nineties documents like “Tomorrow’s Doctors” emphasised the direction and change that undergraduate medical training had to take. It stated that “students must be properly prepared for their first day as Pre-Registration House Officer”. There are current arguments that junior doctors are not fully prepared for working life when they finish university. This study aims to analyse this perceived truth. Methods: I employed use of semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of medical school’s qualified interns. A grounded theory thematic analysis approach was used. Results: The interviews confirmed the participants’ sense of being ill-prepared for the complexities of being a doctor. Issues such as managing professional relationships, navigating hospital politics, building support networks, knowing when to seek help and dealing with ethically challenging situations were all highlighted. Conclusions: The study has established that the medical school in which the study was situated is teaching its graduates to an acceptable standard with regard to their medical knowledge base, communication skill abilities and the basic tenets of history taking and examination, but it needs to prepare graduates in a more concrete way for working in complex multiprofessional clinical environments and for participating effectively in the context of acute medical emergencies. It is arguable that all medical schools should follow up their graduates to assess how well the medical school curriculum has prepared their graduates for practice.