Foundation doctor
NHS doctor less than two years postgraduate
A foundation doctor, or resident doctor, is a grade of medical practitioner in the United Kingdom undertaking the Foundation Programme, a two-year, general postgraduate medical training programme which forms the bridge between medical school and specialist/general practice training. Doctors in the first year of the programme are known as Foundation Year 1 (FY1) doctors, and those in the second year are known as Foundation Year 2 (FY2) doctors. Being a foundation doctor is compulsory for all newly qualified medical practitioners in the UK starting from 2005 onwards. The grade of foundation doctor has replaced the traditional grades of pre-registration house officer and senior house officer.
Foundation doctors have the opportunity to gain experience in a series of posts in a variety of specialties and healthcare settings. Learning objectives for each stage are specific and focused on demonstration of clinical competences. Emphasis was on the assessment and management of acutely ill patients, but changes in the curriculum have stressed that chronic conditions are also important. Training also encompasses the generic professional skills applicable to all areas of medicine – teamwork, time management, communication and IT skills.
Foundation Year 1
This year replaces what was known as pre-registration house officer. In the first year of foundation training, FY1s rotate through three or four jobs in different hospital specialties.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Foundation doctor” as nHS doctor less than two years postgraduate. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q489633. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Foundation doctor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.