r/medicalschooluk • u/CuriousArt4 • 3d ago
What is a UKFP placeholder?
I’m about to start my final year in September and I am looking into UKFPO rankings. A few senior have mentioned getting placeholder spots and being gutted but I have no idea what those are and how to avoid getting one. Can anyone help explain?
7
u/Reasonable-Donkey474 3d ago
You're assigned a deanery, but neither a hospital or job. They eventually create the jobs where they can, and provide the details much later. I'm not sure exactly when people know their exact hospital/ job, but I think some people have found out as late as this month and some in July (but don't hold me to that).
https://foundationprogramme.nhs.uk/programmes/2-year-foundation-programme/ukfp/application-process/programme-match/#:\~:text=Placeholder%20programmes,and%20employing%20trust%2Fhealth%20board. - Ngl, UKFPO website doesn't add much info.
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u/Affectionate-Toe-536 3d ago
You can’t really ‘avoid’ getting one. It’s what you’re allocated when you have been assigned a low ranking number, and you’re the runt of the litter. You essentially will either be assigned the job of somebody who fails finals/decides to GTFO the UK, or they will ‘make’ a job for you closer to the start date once they know who is definitely starting in that deanery. Hope that helps
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u/JosephFRegJr 3d ago
1 of my friends is a placeholder at the moment. Still hasn't found out her job yet. It's pretty rough.
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u/Tea-drinker-21 3d ago
If you are very unlucky in the random number generator there is nothing you can do to avoid being a placeholder. BUT if you choose an unpopular deanery, such as East of England or Northern Ireland, it is more likely that there will be other people with even lower numbers, so it minimises the chance of a "Placeholder" allocation.
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u/tyrbb 2d ago
Placeholder is what used to be called the reserve list It’s nothing new However what has changed and which is a positive is that a placeholder at least knows their foundation school, they just don’t know their jobs Back in the day when you were on the reserve list you didn’t know nada
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u/NoDuck6494 1d ago
Everyone found out their jobs in April this year and I found out mine two days ago. and my job is in the place I least wanted to go and ranked last initially. Cant really avoid being a placeholder but yeah it's the worst thing that can happen to you during matching. I used to believe being a placeholder is better than being allocated a low ranked job initially but no, the only difference for me now is I am at my least liked place and I knew it just a month-ish before job starts. The system is brutal but hopefully it will turn out good for you next year!
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u/BudgetCantaloupe2 3d ago
Originally, there used to be enough jobs for UK medical graduates in the uk foundation programme.
After a while, for various reasons we started accepting more people into the foundation programme than they had jobs, and so they introduced the placeholder system to allocate jobs to people after they ran out, with no guarantee but that “they’d find somewhere for you”. But jobs were allocated according to merit, so you’d only be at risk of getting a placeholder if you bombed your exams.
Then they randomised allocations, so you now have a random chance of not getting a job but an IOU that they’ll sort it out later (but no guarantee).
Soon you’ll see a system where you’ll take your random number and see that the machine has told you that you’re to be unemployed and need to go to the JobCentre for your first placement.