just want a rant about something i feel is unfair!

Can you not make sure that your course provider etc is aware of this?

It's not the same but when I applied to do my teaching placements, they tried to keep people within the local area to which they were resident. I don't see why they would deliberately post you at the other end of the country to your new husband, or rather the area you rank first. Is it quite common to send people miles away from their first choice placement?

I know people have to go wherever the jobs are but it does seem unfair that medic couples get priority over others. What about couples who have children?

You might get lucky and it'll be ok. If not at least it is only for two years then hopefully you can get a job close to each other. Unfortunately lots of couples start out this way early in their careers, I'm dreading us both finishing uni and trying to find a job in the same city.

Could you rate the region you will be living in with your new H as your first preference? Even if it might not be, but then you'd be together?

On a side note, *hugs* hope you sort it out ☹️

It sucks but I know a lot of FY1/2s who are married and are at opposite ends of the country. It's just rubbish but I suppose you have to take a job wherever it is

Yeah they are aware as there was an article in the BMJ about this last year but they don't really seem to care.

If you have children or a carer you get mitigating circumstances. I understand that being married isnt a decent enough reason to get a particular area, but i think its the non-medic discrimination which has made me mad! lol

My first choice will be the region i live in now and where we both study, I will just have to hope I get it, I know Mr Firefairy and I will be able to cope if separated, we did long distance for two yrs already, its jsut not ideal for what I wanted as first yr of marriage!

Heres hoping I get my region when it comes to applying if not, nowt I can do. Just wanted a moan, thanks for your sympathies ladies

That is unfair, surely they should give priority to people who have serious commitments (marriage being one of them). Good luck, hope you get your first choice!

Thats not very good at all. Should be like the forces- if you are married you can live together, which is still old fashioned but..

I will write a serious reply to this thread tomorrow (I'm a junior doctor who went through this system a few years ago) but I'm just posting here so I'm subscribed to the thread and remember to check it!

Right, here we go...

I should explain my situation first: I graduated in 2009 so applied for the Foundation Programme in late 2008. At that point I had been with OH (also, like yours, not a medic) for 2 years, long-distance the entire time. We knew it was serious but didn't want to think about marriage etc until we had tried living together. He was working in London and not really able to leave his job, so I had no option but to apply for London.

So, onto the application system. On the surface it does look quite unfair, but as Ben Goldacre (❤️) would say, "I'm afraid it's a bit more complicated than that." For the non-medics, this is a national application system, and about 6-7000 new doctors apply every year. They have to make sure that all jobs in all hospitals are filled, while trying to send people to places that they want to work. There are some areas, notably London, which are very oversubscribed, and others, such as Wales and various parts of Northern England, that are undersubscribed, so unfortunately some people are not going to get their first choice, but they have tried quite hard to make it as fair as possible.

This linking thing is basically a result of the MTAS disaster a few years back, where due to a series of administrative ***-ups, a lot of great doctors were left without jobs, while hospitals had posts unfilled, and a lot of couples were sent to opposite ends of the country, despite there being jobs available closer to each other. It's worth pointing out that you can apply to have your application linked to ANYONE, not just your partner, so you can apply with a friend if you like. Even so, it's not a brilliant system - you get sent to the deanery which the lowest-scoring of the two gets into, which could be a long way down your list of preferences, and then even though you're in the same deanery there is NO guarantee you will be in hospitals anywhere near each other, especially if you go for a geographically large deanery like East Anglia or Scotland. So it's not all that great. The reason you can't apply for it if your partner is not a medic is that the UK Foundation Programme Office has no control over who you choose to date or what job they choose to do. There are so many people in serious relationships/engaged/married by the end of medical school that if they were to give all of them preference when it came to selecting jobs, it would a)be an administrative nightmare and b)be quite discriminatory against those who are single. It's worth remembering that in very few other jobs/professions would you be able to ask for your partner's job to be taken into consideration when applying for jobs, so it's not that unusual or unfair.

For higher specialty training there is no option of linking applications, so at that stage a lot of people have to make difficult decisions about ideal jobs vs staying with their partner. As all F1 jobs are much of a muchness there's not such an emphasis on "ideal jobs" apart from avoiding specialties you hate, which you can do anywhere!

For those of you who asked about couples with children - you can apply for mitigating circumstances to be placed in one area, but the only circumstances they will consider are a)having children, b)being a carer for a relative or partner (I got this for my F2 year when my OH had cancer) or c)having a medical condition that requires specialist treatment at a particular hospital. As I said before, it just wouldn't be practical to give mitigating circs to everyone in a relationship.

So basically, although it seems unfair on the surface, I'm not really sure how else they could do it. To put a positive spin on things, if your OH is also a student then this surely means he has some flexibility in where he chooses to work after graduation? So he could look for work wherever you are placed. Secondly, about 85% of people are placed in their first choice deanery, so the odds of you getting sent really far away are pretty small.

Personally I think it's far more unfair that the application is scored on your ability to answer 100-word questions like "Describe an example of teamwork in your clinical practice" rather than how good a doctor you are, but that's another story...

Thanks Helenia

Yeah I know there's no fair ways of doing it and its a tricky one. I was just having a bad day, was feeling low already and then felt hard come by! I just don't particularly want to be apart after having done 2yrs long distance, then living together for two yrs to then be married and apart again. But I know theres nothing I can do to change the possibility

I'll just have to hope for the best, tbh even if I get my deanery choice, its a large one so I could still end up 2.5hrs away!

Also, sadly as despite my OH being older than me he delayed going to uni until this yr (where I am) so still has a least 2yrs to go (probably 3 as he wants to do a placement) after my graduation so he cannot move.

And we no longer have to answer 100 word questions, the white space forms have gone. No we will take a "Situational Judgement Test" where we have to rank a list of options of what we think and FY1 SHOULD do, (note not WOULD do) in certain situations. So we shall see how that pans out. We're the first yr to do it (although they've piloted it) whether this is better than white space questions I have no idea!

I have no idea about the current system as I am not a medic, but if it gives you any hope, my medic parents were posted apart and had to cope without each other for long periods of time. They did manage to live together once they'd completed their GP training, although my dad was in London and she was in Reading so it was a long commute every day for her.

They're celebrating their 26th wedding anniversary this year and have two (wonderful ?) children, and still love their jobs. It will all be worth it in the end xxx