Doctors seek judicial review on job selection
From Mmc
Doctors seek judicial review on job selection
Sarah Hall Monday May 14, 2007
Junior doctors will this week take the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, to court in a final attempt to stop a job selection process she admits "has simply not worked". Remedy UK, an organisation representing 10,000 young doctors, is seeking a judicial review that would mean all training posts granted under the discredited system would only last for a year, allowing for a fairer system to be introduced in six months.
The action comes as the MTAS (Medical Training Application Service) website - through which doctors were meant to book interviews - remains unavailable following a security lapse which enabled confidential information on all applicants to be accessed by the public.
Up to 24,000 junior doctors having extra interviews this month are being contacted by phone since the online process that was supposed to streamline appointments is out of action.
Junior doctors, consultants and MPs have condemned the online system as unfair and incompetent after it became clear that thousands of good candidates were obtaining none of the four possible interviews, while weaker candidates were being selected for them.
It then emerged that the shortlisting process was flawed, with little weight being given to academic ability and no consensus about how to mark the applications.
A review, led by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, took three days to bin the system and propose a rescue package, whereby applicants would each get one guaranteed interview for their first preference.
But Remedy UK will argue this is unlawful since, by changing the MTAS architecture midway through, doctors who could have expected four interviews will have been penalised by only being allowed one.
