All the Presidents Men
From Mmc
All the President’s men and Modernising Medical Careers
I am the chair of a specialist training committee (STC) in neurology and have been appalled at the implementation of the UK’s Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) programme. The figures on impending medical unemployment used in your Editorial (Mar 17, p 879)1 are not correct: the true scale is worse. There are at least 33 000 applicants for 18 530 posts across the UK.
On March 8, I emailed all STC chairs within the West Midlands, plus all STC chairs in neurology in the UK, asking for signatories to a letter to get round 1 of MMC suspended immediately. I was then approached anonymously by a member of the MMC panel who provided me with the above figures. These were then confirmed by Ian Gilmore, President of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) in an email to all RCP fellows dated March 17, 2007. I leaked the correct figures2 only for them to be denied by the Department of Health.
The fact that there might be as many as 14 000 doctors unemployed rather than 8000 is not the most frustrating thing. The real annoyance is the acceptance of politicians who mislead the public. I would challenge anyone who has been as involved with MMC as I have to read the recent statements by Patricia Hewitt and Lord Hunt and not conclude that, in normal parlance, they are lying. For example, if Hewitt’s statement that “it is not true to say that the MTAS IT system crashed”3 is correct, how does she explain the 1300 applications in the West Midlands that disappeared for several days before having to be re-entered? Likewise, Lord Hunt’s comment that “we do not expect thousands of doctors currently working in the NHS to be facing unemployment in August”4 defies the laws of mathematics. The latest suggestion that another 5000 interviews can be done as part of round 1 is pure fantasy: for the overstretched consultant and deanery staff this will be like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. Finally, the review being undertaken is not independent and contains some of the main architects of MMC. I would urge all UK hospital staff to follow the lead of Morris Brown and colleagues5 and speak out publicly, challenging politicians and the medical establishment to stop round 1 in specialties where it has clearly failed. There is no excuse, as health professionals, for saying that we were just “following orders”.
I declare that I have no conflict of interest.
David J Nicholl
STC Chair for Neurology—West Midlands, Department of Neurology, City Hospital, Birmingham B18 7QH, UK
1 The Lancet. MMC: mass medical culling. Lancet 2007; 369: 879.
2 Murray-West R. Hewitt told ‘a year ago’ about likely crisis over doctors’ jobs. Daily Telegraph March 13, 2007.
3 House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Mar 2007. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/cgi-bin/newhtml_hl?DB=semukparl&STEMMER=en&WORDS=modernis%20medic%20career&ALL=modernising%20medical%20careers&ANY=&PHRASE=&CATEGORIES=&SIMPLE=&SPEAKER=&COLOUR=red&STYLE=s&ANCHOR=70319-0004.htm_spnew0&URL=/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm070319/debtext/70319-0004.htm#70319-0004.htm_spnew0 (accessed April 30, 2007).
4 Lord Hunt. VSO doctors. The Times April 24, 2007.
5 Brown M, Boon N, Brooks N, et al. Modernising Medical Careers, Medical Training Application Service, and the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board: time for the emperors to don their clothes. Lancet 2007; 369: 967–68.
Published Online May 1, 2007 DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60680-1
