I wouldn't trust this system to select someone to water my plants
From Mmc
I wouldn't trust this system to select someone to water my plants
Last Updated: 2:19am GMT 12/03/2007
Telegraph columnist Dr Max Pemberton is one of the lucky junior doctors to have been granted an interview under the Government's controversial Medical Training Application Service. However, the experience has left him demoralised.
So, I think to myself as I sit in the small, characterless room. This is it. Chairs are arranged around the edge, and everyone is sitting in silence, staring at the floor feeling uncomfortably close. A woman outside can be heard crying down the telephone.
And then some grey man in a grey suit walks in, stops and calls out my name. I stand up and he takes me away.
I am one of the lucky ones. I am here for one of the much coveted Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) interviews, the farcical scheme introduced by the Government to assess and recruit doctors for specialist training. As a result of its implementation, all the junior doctors in this country will, from August this year, have their contracts terminated and must re-apply for the jobs they have being doing perfectly ompetently up until now.
The new scheme, which has cut drastically the total number of training posts (there were 30,000 applications for 22,000 positions) has failed in every way possible, and is disrupting the lives of young doctors on an unprecedented scale. Many of those who have spent nearly a decade in training are seeing their planned careers evaporate.
In the waiting room, the fear is palpable. So much depends on the next few hours.
Any doctor awaiting an interview and hoping that the interview process will in some way be superior to the ludicrous, Kafkaesque application form should be warned: it isn't.
The grey man led me into a room filled with work stations manned by confused, bewildered looking interviewers. Some of them were doctors, some, I learned later, were not. None was properly introduced to me. It was clear they hadn't read my form and knew nothing about me. Each asked a series of formulaic questions to which I had a few minutes to provide equally formulaic answers.
There was no provision for me to discuss anything, to show my strengths and qualities, or to talk about the things that interest me. The bland questions were designed to elicit responses that could be ticked off on a form.
In all honesty, I wouldn't trust this system to select someone to water my plants, let alone look after me when I'm sick.
I left the interview feeling desperate: desperate for my colleagues who hadn't been selected for interview; desperate for those who had; desperate for the chance to continue in a career I have worked so hard to be a part of.
But I felt more desperate for the future state of health care in this country. What is happening now matters to every one of us.
Not only have our taxes paid for the training of every doctor who now faces unemployment, the system as it stands is failing to select the best doctors of the future.
This is a clear attempt to undermine the medical profession; to ensure that we become compliant, unquestioning automatons in a system that can be presided over by managers and politicians.
Doctors are notorious for being apathetic when it comes to fighting their corner. Not this time. We are so horrified by what is happening that there is now even talk of a strike.
There will be a protest march in London on Saturday. This is the last chance to save the medical profession before the grey men in suits take it away.
