This week 30,000 junior doctors are chasing 22,000 specialist training posts using the government’s ‘Modernising Medical Careers’ (MMC) scheme and an untried electronically based short listing tool called the Medical Training Application System (MTAS). Anxious young doctors that are understandably upset by the mess that the government has created.
MMC is designed to reform the process of career progression for doctors. The need for reform was broadly supported by the profession but implementation has been hopeless.
Under MMC the old hierarchy of house officers, senior house officers and specialist registrars has been replaced with a two year foundation programme leading to specialist training posts progressing to consultant or general practitioner level within an abbreviated minimum of five years.
The BMA has rightly attacked as ‘shambolic’ the current chaos that revolves around MTAS, a system that was meant to make applications ‘fairer’ and to circumvent the old boys’ network that the government had identified.
MTAS is set to become the latest in a string of government computer disasters. It has been associated with repeated delays giving young doctors very little time to prepare for the interviews which commenced last week, it has generated invitations for interview in the wrong specialities, at the wrong level and which clash. Unhelpfully for patient care it has generated capacity issues for hard-pressed consultants who have been forced to interview within a very tight window.
MTAS is not secure. The Official Opposition has been contacted by doctors that have been alarmed to find that confidential information can be accessed and even changed by third parties.
My front bench colleagues pressed Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State, to review MMC and MTAS and to report to Parliament on the remedial action that she intends to take. This review is now underway. I would have preferred it, however, if the interview process had been suspended until the review is complete and changes made. Unfortunately, interviews based on an unfair and shambolic selection mechanism are proceeding. |
