Chairs, W Midlands ST3

From Mmc

07 March 07

An open letter to West Midlands Deanery, Department of Health and Presidents of Royal Colleges

Dear Sir,

We the undersigned are chairpersons of respective specialist training committees within the West Midlands. We are fully aware of the problems that have occurred with Modernising Medical Careers, particularly with the MTAS system, long-listing and short-listing as part of round 1 of the application process. We believe that the recent statements of both the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the Department of Health are both misguided and likely to exacerbate the problems by failing to call for immediate suspension of interviews within round 1.

In essence, since the DoH have called for an urgent review but failed to suspend interviews, this will immediately mean that any candidate unsuccessful at interview will be able to make a legal challenge under existing employment law. There will be easily enough data from the interviews that have already taken place to get a measure of both the scale and nature of the problems. This in fact is the retrospective pilot study of MMCs implementation that had not previously been performed.

We would urge that there is an immediate cessation of interviews so that precious time is spent analysing the existing data and also to prepare more fully for a more comprehensive long-listing, short-listing and interview process. Finally, we would stress that all of us want to see MMC work, but it is vital that all parties have the time for a proper application process to work in order for this region to have the best trainees it deserves. Our patients deserve nothing less.

Dr David Nicholl,STC Chair Neurology- West Midlands

Mr Bob Spychal,STC Chair General Surgery- West Midlands etc etc