Medical school origins of award-winning anaesthetists; analysis of a complete national dataset.

Background: The ultimate aim of medical education is to produce successful practitioners, which is a goal that educators, students and stakeholders support. These groups consider success to comprise optimum patient care with consequently positive career progression. Accordingly, identification of the common educational features of such high-achieving doctors will facilitate the generation of clinical excellence amongst future medical trainees. In our study we source data from British clinical merit award schemes and subsequently identify the medical school origins of anaesthetists who have achieved at least national distinction.

Methods: Britain operates Distinction Award/Clinical Excellence Award schemes which honour National Health Service doctors in Scotland, Wales and England who are identified as high achievers. This quantitative observational study used these awards as an outcome measure in an analysis of the 2019-20 dataset of all 901 national award-winning doctors. Where appropriate, Pearson's Chi-Square test was applied.

Results: The top five medical schools (London university medical schools, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow) were responsible for 56.4% of the anaesthetist award-winners, despite the dataset representing 85 medical schools. 93.6% of the anaesthetist merit award-winners were from European medical schools. 8.06% of the anaesthetist award-winners were international medical graduates compared with 11.5% non-anaesthetist award-winners being international medical graduates.

Conclusions: The majority of anaesthetists who were national merit award-winners originated from only five, apparently overrepresented, UK university medical schools. In contrast, there was a greater diversity of medical school origins among the lower grade national award-winners; tier 3 award-winners represented 20 different medical schools from three continents. As well as ranking educationally successful university medical schools, this study assists UK and international students, by providing a roadmap for rational decision making when selecting anaesthetist and non-anaesthetist medical education pathways that are more likely to fulfil their career ambitions.