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What do I do if a hospital ghosts me?

Assume silence means nothing and work the published dates. NSW lists its offer windows — for the 2027 year, main-round offers late Aug to Oct and a second round from 29 Sep 1. Most NSW hospitals never send a rejection; they hold your application in case someone declines 4. Phone the workforce unit, then apply elsewhere.

Check the calendar before you panic. Every campaign publishes an offer window, and they are long. NSW's 2026 campaign for the 2027 year set main-round offers from late August through October and opened a second round on 29 Sep 1. Queensland's registrar and PHO offers began 3 Aug but JHO/SHO offers not until late September 2. SA's rounds ran 17 Sep, 24 Sep, 1 Oct and 8 Oct 3. Being unheard-of in early September is normal in three of those four.

Silence is usually not a rejection, and that is the problem. The community's consistent report from NSW is that only a minority of hospitals send rejection emails at all — applications are held "pending" so a candidate can be pulled in if someone declines at the last minute, and the bulk rejections go out months later when the job is readvertised 4. One person recorded a rejection arriving two years on 4. That mechanism explains the silence; it does not excuse it, and the highest-upvoted reply calls it exactly what it is 4.

What to actually do. Ring the junior medical workforce unit rather than emailing the portal — the sub's default advice for finding any job is Google plus phoning medical workforce 5. Ask where the round is up to, not whether you specifically got it. Meanwhile keep applying: second rounds, late-vacancy processes and direct emails to hospitals you have not tried 56.

Do not read the portal status. Applicants report portal states that mean nothing and offers that arrive by phone before any letter 4. The hospital that calls you is the signal; the dashboard is not.

Sources

  1. NSW Health JMO Recruitment — key dates (offer windows and second round, 2027 clinical year) health.nsw.gov.au campaign pageofficial
  2. Queensland Health — RMO and Registrar Campaign dates (registrar/PHO offers before SHO/JHO offers) careers.health.qld.gov.au campaign pageofficial
  3. SA MET — PGY2+ key dates (four offer rounds, 2027 clinical year) samet.org.au campaign pageofficial
  4. r/ausjdocs — JMO campaign outcome (why NSW hospitals do not send rejections) reddit.com r/ausjdocslore
  5. r/ausjdocs — No job this year as a PGY2 (email medical workforce directly) reddit.com r/ausjdocslore
  6. r/ausjdocs — Ghosting after job applications reddit.com r/ausjdocslore

What the sub said

r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.

The lack of communication around interview and job offers is one of the most disgusting aspects of working for NSW Health. In no other profession would it be considered appropriate to ghost people like that.

u/clementineford · Aug 2026 · comment

It might involve taking a relief term or a term no one else wants to get foot in the door, but small price to pay.

Only a minority of hospitals send rejection emails in NSW. A lot of hospitals prefer to keep your application pending just in case someone else declines at the last minute and they need you to fill that spot.

u/Popliteal_aneurysm99 · Aug 2026 · comment

Seems like a lot of rejection emails go out when they are starting to readvertise the job in April or so the next year.

u/swimfast58 · Aug 2026 · comment

Threads

Asked 23 times on r/ausjdocs (title-regex count) · encoded by hand from the numbered sources, retrieved 12 Sept 2026; no AI wrote any of it.

how the count was madeasked_count = posts in the 19,145-post r/ausjdocs dump (2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /ghost(ed|ing)?|no (reply|response)|heard (back |anything )?(from|yet)|still waiting/i. Quotes are the top-scoring comments in the 2026 NSW campaign-outcome thread, pairing the mechanism with the complaint so the explanation does not read as a defence.