The association between trainee demographic factors and self-reported experience: Analysis of General Medical Council National Training Survey 2014 and 2015 data

OBJECTIVES To investigate whether demographic factors are associated with self-reported experience amongst medical trainees in the UK. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of survey data. SETTING General Medical Council (UK) National Training Survey data for 2014 and 2015. PARTICIPANTS A total of 105,549 responses were provided from 68,551 participants when no data were removed. After removing data to preserve participant anonymity, there were 64,278 participants providing 99,076 responses. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Considered trainee factors were gender, ethnicity, country of primary medical qualification, grade, post specialty and deanery. Self-reported outcome measures were 'overall satisfaction', 'adequate experience', 'workload', 'clinical supervision', 'educational supervision', and 'access to educational resources'. RESULTS The experience of medical trainees across various indicators is differentially related to gender, ethnicity, country of primary medical qualification, grade, post specialty and deanery. CONCLUSIONS It is demonstrated here that trainee factors are associated with subjective experience across different indicators. Further work is required to explore the reasons behind this, and how this relates to trainee quality of life, work performance and career progression.