focus of healthcare priorities . So , how can you tell how many doctors of any specialty that you need in any one part of the country 8-10 years from now ?
Workforce planning increasingly focuses on creating doctors who have a broader base of skills . They can then be deployed to more specific roles as the needs become clearer . Supporting each doctor through lengthy training programmes also takes significant investment and considerable dedication of finite resources . So , it ’ s important to avoid “ false starts ” and “ restarts ”. The ideal is to match the “ right ” people with the “ right ” programmes at the first attempt .
These points help explain why there is relatively greater availability of CT1 than ST1 posts . CT programmes can provide broad experience before dedicated specialism with entry to ST3 or ST4 roles . Alternatively , doctors can use the CT programmes as a route to other non-training roles .
This all means that the number of training posts available on each programme is limited , leading to real competition between the candidates who apply .
For any job application process , regardless of profession , there are three obvious sets of stakeholders , each with complementary objectives :
1 . The organisation which wants to fill its vacancy with the very best candidate available . 2 . The applicants who each want to secure the position for themselves . 3 . The interviewers or assessors who aim to establish the relative suitability of each candidate .
When faced with multiple applicants the organisation has the challenge of finding out as much as it possibly can about each of them . Ideally it wants to establish every candidate ’ s current abilities , motivations , attitudes and potential . It then needs to collate this information and compare each person , somehow grading their various qualities to make the best choice . When several roles are available the organisation must rank the candidates into a priority order for job offers .
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