Are you affiliated with Oriel?
No – we are a group of junior doctors who have struggled with the job ranking process in the past and are trying to make things easier.
Where do you get your list of foundation jobs from?
We use a web crawler to download the jobs directly from the Oriel website. This means that our jobs list should be identical to the one that is on Oriel at the time of downloading. However, we have noticed that Oriel often make changes throughout the process and don’t let us know. If you notice a discrepancy please email info@medibuddy.co.uk and we’ll get it fixed.
Some of the jobs/rotations on your ranker are different to my foundation school’s spreadsheet.
When we have ran the ranker in the past, we noticed that there were a few instances where the foundation school spreadsheets did not correlate with the jobs data that was on Oriel. When this happens, we use the Oriel data since this is the system that you will actually be using to input your jobs.
Some of the jobs/rotations on your ranker are different to Oriel.
Since we are independent of Oriel, they do not let us know when they make changes to their jobs list. If Oriel make changes after we have crawled their website, the changes will not automatically appear on the job ranker. We would be grateful if you could report any discrepancies to info@medibuddy.co.uk and we’ll get them fixed.
Is the foundation job ranker free?
Yes – we know how expensive becoming a doctor is so we’re keeping the foundation job ranker free. We have however added an optional premium feature, which for £25 will overlay the GMC satisfaction rating for each job and tell you how competitive each rotation was in 2023.
How does the ranker work?
The ranker works by allocating positive or negative scores to each specialty or location you drag into 'Like' or 'Dislike'. 'Likes' get +5 and 'Dislikes' get -5 and 'Indifferent' get 0. By selecting a preference of Location or Specialty, all of your scores for that preference will be multiplied by three (+15/-15). Each job is then cross-checked with your selections to get an overall score.
The ranker hasn’t put my favourite specialty at the top.
The final list is worked out using an algorithm based on all the options you have chosen. Therefore the specialty you like the most may not appear at the top of your results list if it is in a rotation with specialties in your dislike list. However, we have made it possible to drag and drop the results lists so you can change the final order as much as you like.
What are the GMC satisfaction ratings and where do you get them from?
The GMC satisfaction data for each job is available on the GMC website. Every year the GMC survey all the doctors in the country and get them to rate their jobs based on a number of factors including teaching, work load etc. They use this survey to generate their satisfaction ratings. The higher the number, the more satisfied the junior doctors were with the job.
What do the competitiveness ratings mean?
Essentially, the higher the score, the more competitive the job is. The most competitive job will be scored 100, with the least competitive scored 0. All other jobs will fall between these two scores.
How do you know how competitive each rotation was in 2023?
Oriel and the Foundation Programme do not release competitiveness data for foundation rotations. The competitiveness score that we have given each rotation is based on our independent data. In 2023 over half the medical students in the country used our ranker to rank their foundation jobs. This makes our data the largest independent source of competition ratings available.
How is the competition rating calculated?
The competition rating was calculated using data from our 2023 Foundation Job Ranker. We assign a score to every location and specialty, then combine these to create a score for each job. These scores are then compared with the others jobs within the foundation school to get their final competitiveness rating.
Some jobs don’t have a satisfaction rating next to them.
The GMC were able to survey the vast majority of junior doctors in the country, however there are some jobs that they were not able to collect data for. These jobs appear as N/A.
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