Research Finds That Younger Doctors Are More Likely to Train and Work Closer to Home

The geographical distribution of doctors is an important factor in the equitable distribution of health services.Trevor Lambert, a statistician from Oxford University who led the research team, said: "Compared with similar data we reported fifteen years ago, the relationships between location of career post and training post, career post and medial school and career post and original family home have strengthened in recent UK cohorts." Lambert believes that this may reflect increasing moves to structure specialist training programmes in non-teaching hospitals with training relationships with their local medical school.Lambert explains that the increase in percentages of doctors who stay local may also reflect shorter periods of training such that doctors are less inclined to move to career posts afar from training posts. However he points out that one of the most striking characteristics in the trends was the increased likelihood that doctors from more recent than older cohorts settled, for their first career post, in the broad location of their family home.