9,000 Doctors may not get job

From Mmc

9,000 DOCTORS MAY NOT GET JOB

Tuesday March 20,2007

AROUND 9,000 junior doctors may discover they have no jobs to go to this summer, the Health Secretary admitted last night.For the first time, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has confirmed that 32,000 young medics had applied for just 23,000 training posts.And she refused to offer any apologies for the weeks of agonising they now face over their job prospects in the NHS.

The chaos began when a new system for educating doctors introduced by ministers meant too many medics were being trained at the same time. Then a computer glitch a few weeks ago meant the best young doctors were not being shortlisted for the top NHS jobs.

The farce forced ministers to order an urgent review into what went wrong and a report is expected to be published later this week advising hospitals to hunt down the best applicants who slipped through the net and invite them in for late interviews.

On Saturday, the anger of Britain’s young doctors reached a head when more than 5,000 marched through the streets of London in their white coats and theatre scrubs in protest.

Ms Hewitt refused to reiterate comments made by former health minister Lord Warner three months ago that “doctors in training should be pretty confident of securing a training post”.

Last night, Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said the situation was a “shambles”.

He added: “Patricia Hewitt’s statement offers no consolation to the thousands of junior doctors who have been let down. “She failed to apologise and failed to answer key questions.”