Government must not allow doctors' careers to be ruined, says BMA leader
From Mmc
Government must not allow doctors' careers to be ruined, says BMA leader (issued Monday 16 Apr 2007)
The chairman of the British Medical Association today (Sunday 15 April 2007) called for a cast-iron guarantee that no junior doctor will lose out on training opportunities because of ongoing problems with the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS).
Latest figures show that 34,250 junior doctors are currently applying for 18,500 specialist training posts in the UK through MTAS. In a speech to the BMA Junior Members Forum in Dundee today, Mr James Johnson, Chairman of Council of the BMA called for a safety net for all UK doctors in training whose applications are unsuccessful.
“It’s disgraceful that thousands of our best doctors could have their NHS careers wrecked through no reason other than government mistakes and poor workforce planning. For the sake of patients who deserve the best possible care, and to ensure an NHS staffed by fully trained doctors, we need solutions that ensure that no-one is forced out of training. People who have worked for years to follow their ambitions of becoming NHS consultants or GPs cannot be thrown on the scrap heap.”
A review group looking at MTAS is currently proposing that all applicants - around a third of whom were initially offered no interviews - will get at least one – their first choice. No doctor will have an interview already offered taken away.
However, Mr Johnson said that whatever the outcome of the review, solutions had to be found for doctors who were unsuccessful.
“The solution currently proposed is, unfortunately, the least bad way forward out of this mess. Stopping the process now would mean more anxiety for junior doctors, and a huge amount of consultants’ and applicants’ time and effort going to waste. But whatever happens, there’s going to be a significant cohort of junior doctors who lose out on training posts. We will push the government to give a cast-iron guarantee that they will not be forced out of training.”
Mr Johnson suggested the possibility of such doctors being allowed to continue in their old “Senior House Officer” posts until they can enter specialist training, and the creation of more year-long training posts. He also called for an independent review of the whole of the Modernising Medical Careers reforms, of which MTAS is part.
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