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Junior Doctors' Training Crisis
For some incomprehensible reason for Department of Health have this year decided to have a mammoth clear out, called ‘Modernising Medical Careers’ All Junior Doctors are jobless from 1 August. All of them have to join in one UK application system for further training. * They had to apply online to a computer system which kept crashing and did not work; a psychiatrist was shortlisted for a job in paediatrics! * They were NOT allowed to give details of their experience, references, or a curriculum vitae. Even if you had an MD it counts for nought in the process. * They are NOT allowed to apply for a particular specialty; they are told to choose at least two. So what else does a would-be surgeon choose? * They are NOT allowed to apply to work in a specific job in a specific place; you may apply for Emergency Medicine in ‘Scotland’ and you have to accept the first job you are offered; you may finish up hundred of miles from your wife, husband or partner if they are a doctor too. * They are NOT permitted to know how much the job will pay; how do you get a mortgage like that? * They may be allocated a job which is not even going to lead to a consultant level training; but to a short term post with a short training ticket. It seems a sub-consultant grade of shorter trained doctors is being introduced by stealth, against official policy for a consultant-led expansion of care in the NHS for many years. * Yet there is no other way to apply to become a consultant, or to get trained. Medical Unemployment? * There are (we think) about 18,000 jobs on offer; and (we think) about 30,000 applicants; many from other parts of the EU. * Some consultants have been given hundreds of applications to sift in 48 hours. * There are many tales of good doctors not being short-listed for round 1 and being devastated at seeing their dreams wrecked. * Many of them seem to be heading for unemployment; and many will emigrate rather than be humiliated or forced into jobs they do not want, away from their families, or out of medicine. * Many non-EU doctors who have been serving the NHS for years from abroad, have been told they cannot stay for further training once their present UK posts expire; one committed suicide over this. The Government has now had to set up a review of this fiasco, as the consultants and GPs have no confidence in the system which is being imposed. Some consultants and senior GPs have decided to interview all applicants, or none, in opposition to this totally bizarre process. There will be a second round to try to pick up the pieces; but time is short. Patients At Risk Patients will be at risk from these changes, in the short and long term: m Fewer doctors in hospitals in the next few months while they do interviews, or are interviewed; and then when fewer are appointed than would have been the case, rather than doctors being appointed to specific posts on a rolling basis. * A whole new set of junior doctors in every hospital in August; think what that means for smooth handover of service. * Unhappy doctors will not make good doctors if they are in specialties or training grades they did not wish, or they are in places they did not choose. * We may be about to see mass unemployment of some of our brightest graduates. * Many doctors are so disillusioned or disheartened that, against their instincts, they are considering emigration; Austrailia and Canada are recruiting now! * It is completely unjust that doctors from overseas in training are also being compelled to leave because of a complete breakdown in manpower planning. * It appears there will be fewer consultants and more less-highly-trained doctors in the NHS in future years; whom would you prefer to see? Would you apply for a job with no salary ticket and no job description, by computer, ‘somewhere in Scotland’ for a monopoly employer who treats you like this? Please let your MSPs and MP know what you think: our health care is at serious risk.
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