Junior doctors deserve better than this
From Mmc
AS A hospital consultant involved in the new system of recruiting junior hospital doctors, I would like to add my concerns regarding the process (Chaos forces review of junior doctor recruitment, March 7). There are many faults with the system both for those involved in the selection process and also for the junior doctors whose careers are dependent on it. In my speciality of radiology we had many hundreds of applications to shortlist. Unfortunately, the information that we were allowed to see made it virtually impossible to discriminate between candidates. Under the old system, we as shortlisters and interviewers would have had full knowledge of each applicant's work history and experience. We are now no longer allowed that information to help us to shortlist. Instead, the applicants are made to answer general questions regarding, for example, how they coped in a difficult clinical situation. Their responses are often very similar and there is anecdotal evidence that "set" answers may be available on the internet (at a price). The main concerns around this are that potentially good candidates will not be shortlisted and conversely we will inevitably interview some who would not previously have been considered suitable.
A further problem is the interview process itself. In the past this would have been done at regional centres (ie, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee). Now each speciality is organised from one centre - in our case, Aberdeen. The consequence of this is that in addition to candidates having to travel to Aberdeen (as they may have had to do anyway), so will the entire interview panel and its human resources support. This entails a hotel stay for approximately 10 people for four or five days. Multiply that by the number of specialities involved and it is not difficult to guess that the final cost will be fairly substantial. There is also a great deal of concern regarding the time spent away from our already busy clinical workload. This at a time when waiting times are so important.
The past few weeks have seen a huge amount of activity in the shortlisting process for all specialities.This has had to be done in our own time and the timescales laid down by the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) have been completely unrealistic. It is only thanks to the goodwill of those involved (the consultants and their HR support) that the system has not failed completely. Junior doctors in the early years of their career deserve better than this. The system must be improved or even changed for next year's round of applications. The old system was not perfect but no-one has presented any evidence that it was failing in its job of recruiting junior doctors.
Dr John Roberts, 10 Shawhill Crescent, Newton Mearns.
