It makes us so angry, such a waste
From Mmc
It makes us so angry, such a waste
By Alex Berry Last Updated: 2:36am GMT 19/03/2007
Thousands of junior doctors took to the streets at the weekend to voice their anger over the chaotic new system for allocating NHS training posts. Wearing white coats and blue surgical gowns they staged a march through central London culminating in a rally addressed by Conservative leader David Cameron. They fear the Government's Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) scheme, designed to speed up the training process to become a consultant, will split families, drive some doctors abroad and force others to leave the profession. Some 30,000 are competing for 22,000 posts allocated under a computer-based system, plagued by technical problems, that critics say takes scant account of the suitability and experience of candidates. Concerns about the new system, which was introduced in January, came to a head after The Daily Telegraph gave a voice to angry and dismayed junior and senior doctors. Organisers said 12,000 took part in the march on Saturday, which made its way from the Royal College of Physicians in Regents Park to the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mr Cameron was cheered as he described Patricia Hewitt as "the worst Health Secretary in the history of the NHS". He said that the Government's promised review of the issue must be "a proper review not a paper exercise". "They made a promise that every junior doctor in England would have a training post," he said. "We are going to hold them to that promise." Conservative health spokesman Andrew Lansley, who also attended the rally, said doctors were justifiably angry, adding: "The Daily Telegraph has quite rightly led this campaign in the media."
One married couple on the march, parents Alex and James Keegan, fear the new application process could cause turmoil for their family. Alex, 27, and her husband James, 24, have an eight-month old son, Henry, and currently both live and work in London. She is applying for posts in paediatrics across south and south west England. "She might end up working in Bath or something like that and we'll have our house and our baby in London. It will be difficult both of us working and looking after the baby at the same time if she is so far away," James said.
Richard Sidebottom, 30, a senior house officer at London's Central Middlesex Hospital, has been unable to secure an interview for an ophthalmology post. He was joined on the march by his brother Paul, 38, a consultant, and father Eric, 68, a retired Oxford University medical tutor, and said: "My father taught at Oxford, my brother's a consultant anaesthetist, and I'm going to be a plumber." His father said: "I have spent my life in medical education and there has not been anything like this. It just makes us so angry, there is such a waste."
Rob Thomas, 29, who works at Whipps Cross in east London, said despite an excellent academic record and passing his postgraduate exams first time, he had been offered no interviews in his chosen speciality of clinical radiology and may emigrate. "It's disgusting," he said. "I have secured a job in Australia. I don't want to go, I love the NHS, I want to stay here and I want to work here but if I have to go I have to go. I've got to pay my mortgage." Rebecca Walker, 27, who works at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, said she was "one of the lucky ones" because she has been short-listed for interview in her chosen field of ophthalmology but came along to protest over the "disastrous" new system and support fellow doctors who had not been so fortunate. She said: "There are plenty of my colleagues of equal if not better calibre who are left with nothing and a huge degree of uncertainty as to whether they will have employment as of August this year. It is a time of huge uncertainty for all of us."
