British medical graduates may be given priority on jobs
From Mmc
British medical graduates may be given priority on jobs
- Plan to cut number of overseas junior doctors
- Inquiry says applications chaos 'deeply damaging'
Sarah Boseley, health editor Tuesday October 9, 2007
Proposals to slash the numbers of junior doctors from overseas coming to train in the UK were put forward by the government yesterday in an attempt to preserve jobs for the rising numbers of British medical graduates. The health minister, Ben Bradshaw, said that if overseas applicants were preventing those educated here from getting specialist training places, "then it is only right that we should consider what needs to be done".
The government is proposing that doctors from countries outside the EU should not be considered for a job unless there are no qualified applicants from the UK or from elsewhere in Europe, an unlikely scenario given the popularity of medical training. The UK now has 6,451 medical school places, compared with 3,749 in 1997, and each student can cost up to £250,000 to train, said Mr Bradshaw.
He was speaking as Sir John Tooke published the results of his independent inquiry into the chaos this year when the computerised application scheme for junior doctors seeking to train to be consultants had to be scrapped. One of the reasons for the problems, said Sir John, was the unexpectedly large number of overseas doctors applying.
But he made it clear that the problems went far beyond this. Although he declined to apportion blame to individuals, he said both the Department of Health and the medical profession had been found wanting. It had been "a deeply damaging episode for British medicine", he said. Reforms of medical training, which had been in the pipeline for some years, as well as the flawed online medical training application service (MTAS), were rushed through without proper preparation.
The furore over MTAS ran for months, with highly qualified junior doctors threatening to go abroad because they had not been called for a single interview. Eventually MTAS, which had been intended to simplify and centralise applications for training posts, was scrapped.
But the Tooke inquiry criticisms were also levelled at the quality of the proposed training for doctors, something which the junior doctors' protest group Remedy UK highlighted yesterday. "This is a blow-by-blow account of failed leadership in what was an 'emperor's new clothes' situation this year. It was blindingly obvious the reforms were doomed to failure, yet the government political agenda steamrolled over common sense," said Matt Jameson-Evans, co-founder of Remedy UK.
Sir John said this year's recruitment problems would recur next year and thereafter if the status of overseas doctors was not quickly resolved. Under his proposals, UK medical students would automatically get a first-year hospital training place on graduation, which would give them a head start over even European candidates.
Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association, emphasised the importance of doctors being involved in the management of the health service.
