What is a resident doctor?
Resident doctor is the new name for what used to be called ‘junior doctors’ and ‘registrars’. These are doctors (on shorter-term contracts) training to become a senior doctor called a consultant (on a permanent contract).
On 18th September 2024, the British Medical Association (BMA; the doctors union), announced that junior doctors (and registrars) working across the NHS will now be called resident doctors instead – in a change intended to better reflect their expertise.
They called for this change, as they felt the term ‘junior’ is “infantilising and demeaning”.
The term ‘resident doctor’ refers to more than 50,000 qualified doctors working in GP practices and hospitals – some recently out of medical school and others with a decade of experience.
Whether this name persists is another issue. Many ‘old terms’ for junior (sorry resident doctors) and registrars are still in use, e.g.
It is also not clear whether it corresponds to all junior doctors in the (about) 10 year training to become a consultant – i.e. is it to be used up to when they are a ST3 (first 5ish years), or that period plus the ST3-8 period (traditionally the ‘registrar phase’; second 5ish years)?
Either way, MyHSN considers it progress that we are moving away from the concept of a ‘junior doctor’.
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