Promotion to hospital consultant in NHS Scotland

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence promotions of medical staff from registrar to consultant in the Scottish NHS. Design/methodology/approach - The paper addresses the question of what determines the incidence of promotion, concentrating on the impact of experience, effort and the choice of specialty in promotion outcomes. A unique panel data set is used that contains individual level information on all NHS hospital doctors in Scotland from 1991 to 2000. Probabilities of promotion are decomposed by specialty into the part attributable to the mean characteristics of the doctors in each specialty and the effect of belonging to a specialty itself. Findings - The paper estimates a panel model of promotion and identifies specialty effects on promotion. Effort in the two years before promotion is shown to have an influence on promotion probabilities. Specialties are found to exhibit considerable differences in their rate of promotion over and above the differences explained by the characteristics of the doctors in them. Originality/value - The paper examines the promotion of medical staff from registrar to consultant in the Scottish NHS during the 1990s. The paper concentrates on the impact of experience, effort and medical specialty on the probability of promotion.