Jobless junior doctors may be offered VSO work
From Mmc
Jobless junior doctors may be offered VSO work
John Carvel, social affairs editor Saturday April 21, 2007
A rescue package to find jobs for up to 10,000 junior doctors whose careers are in danger of being blighted by a controversial NHS selection procedure includes plans to send some to do voluntary service overseas, a leaked document revealed yesterday. It showed how NHS Employers, the body representing hospital trusts, intends to give priority to finding placements for British and EU graduates who are senior house officers and already well on the way to becoming consultants.
The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, has apologised to junior doctors across England, accepting that they were caused "terrible anxiety" when the NHS mishandled the introduction of a computerised system to select the ablest candidates for training as consultants. The British Medical Association estimated that 34,250 doctors applied for just 18,500 training posts in the UK. In the memo leaked on the website Doctors.net, Sian Thomas, the employers' deputy director, said the shortfall was only 10,000 and many of the applicants were not British or EU graduates working in the NHS. She set out plans to prioritise 500-1,300 high-grade domestic candidates. "We have approached VSO to scope out the possibilities of placements of some doctors overseas - voluntary service posts," she said. VSO gave "a very positive initial response", but cautioned that it was looking for experienced senior house officers.
Jo Hilborne, chairman of the BMA junior doctors committee, said: "It is extremely worrying that NHS managers are preparing for medical unemployment on such a large scale. The government can no longer deny the seriousness of this crisis. The health secretary must guarantee that no doctor will be denied a career in the NHS as a result of poor workforce planning."
A spokeswoman for VSO said: "We have had a conversation with the Department of Health which was very much an information gathering exercise for them."
The shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, said: "If Patricia Hewitt's only solution is to place expensively-trained junior doctors abroad, we need to make sure that we are able to get them back when the NHS needs them. It is a waste of talent, resources and taxpayers' money."
The Liberal Democrat health spokesman, Norman Lamb, said: "Volunteering your services overseas is a great thing for doctors to do, but for the government to consider sending junior doctors abroad just to get it out of a hole is disgraceful."
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We have no plans to arrange for trainee doctors from the NHS to do voluntary service with VSO and we do not expect thousands of doctors currently working in the NHS to be facing unemployment in August."
