'The NHS can't tell me where my job will be'

Jayne Evans has completed four years at medical school in London - but says she is still being left in the dark about where her first permanent NHS position will be.

"I was told that I don't have a job set aside for me," she said.

"They've guaranteed we will only be offered jobs other people decline and there's just no sort of timeline that they can give us."

Ms Evans has been given a rough idea of where she will be working - the Trent area, which spans almost all of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire - but no further clues.

She is one of hundreds of newly-qualified medical students who have not been found a specific job by the NHS yet.

Instead they have a so-called "placeholder job", meaning they have only been told the rough part of the country they will be in.

Without knowing where they will be living, they say they are not able to start preparations for moving.

Ms Evans said it had overshadowed her achievement in qualifying.

"I was expecting around this time to feel excited or even nervous, but now mostly I just feel angry and disrespected," she said.

"I went into medicine and was told we needed doctors and the NHS needs help but I've been told there is no job for me."

Dr Hassan Nassar was one of more than 1,000 medical students in the same position last year.

The BMA, the union that represents doctors and medical students in the UK, has accused the government of failing to plan for an increase in resident doctors - formerly known as junior doctors - after increasing the number of medical school places.

"The government has increased the number of medical school places - but not the number of foundation jobs," Callum Williams, the union's deputy chair of education, said.

"The government needs to increase that funding - and these jobs should go to UK-trained doctors first."

Mr Williams said there was a danger students would move abroad.

"It's your first job with the NHS, it is supposed to be exciting and instead it leaves a sour taste in your mouth," he said.

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Source: BBC News, 7 April 2025