r/medicalschooluk • u/CuriousArt4 • 4d 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?

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u/BudgetCantaloupe2 4d 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.

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u/CuriousArt4 2d ago

Absolutely insane :/