Junior doctors' views about careers in academic medicine

Objective To investigate junior doctors' views about careers in academic me dicine. Design Postal questionnaire survey. Setting National Health Service in England. Subjects Doctors in university posts at specialist registrar level, Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust training fellows, and specialist regis trars in National Health Service posts. Results Incentives to pursue an academic career which respondents rated as strong related to the challenge of research and the intellectual environmen t of research units. The strongest disincentives were perceived difficultie s in obtaining research grants and uncertainty regarding pay parity with Na tional Health Service colleagues. Medical Research Council and Wellcome fel lows had much more protected research time than other academic doctors but were less satisfied with their clinical training. Academic doctors who were not fellows reported spending less than half their time on research and th e great majority agreed that their research suffers when there is pressure on the service side. Conclusions The job content of academic posts should be kept under regular review to ensure that clinical service pressures do not inappropriately ero de research time while also ensuring that postholders have adequate clinica l training. Training programmes need flexibility to accommodate the needs o f clinical academics in their progress through higher specialist training.