A review of the academic and grey literature on the Academic Foundation Programme

The purpose of this study was to review the academic and grey literature specific to the Academic Foundation Programme. This was performed as part of a broader review of the programme. In the United Kingdom the Academic Foundation Programme (AFP) is a competitive entry entity running parallel to the Foundation Programme, the first two years of clinical practice and training for new medical graduates. An electronic search of online journal databases was performed. This was supplemented by hand searching of medical education journals. Grey literature was identified by searching websites of relevant governmental and non-governmental organisations. Eleven academic journal articles and four pieces of grey literature were identified. Personal accounts dominated and shared several positive features of the programme including gaining research skills and having a degree of work freedom balanced with the limitations of a four-month block and frustration at the pace of progress. The personal accounts were supplemented by a small-scale qualitative interview study and an online questionnaire study. The literature pertaining to the AFP is almost entirely positive but is lacking in both critical discourse and higher level evaluation, future studies must move forward in terms of rigour to help our understanding of what does and does not work for early medical academics, and perhaps more importantly, why this might be the case.