Mmc:More Medics Cock-ups
From Mmc
MMC: MORE MEDICS COCK-UPS
20-03-2007
The cock-ups continue with the government’s new recruitment scheme for junior doctors – The Stirrer can reveal that the scoring system for candidates has been changed midway through the selection process.
Last week, a letter was sent to senior medics interviewing for posts in CMT – Core Medical Training - telling them to give extra weighting to candidates with hands-on clinical experience.
Not a bad idea, you might think, as CMT doctors are the ones you’re likely to see first when you arrive at hospital, and they have to be ready to deal with all kinds of emergency from a paracetamol overdose to an asthma attack.
The trouble is that consultants in the West Midlands were given the new guidelines after interviews using the old marking system had been carried out in East Anglia, the North West, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Their results will be fed into the national computer alongside those of the 2,000 junior doctors being interviewed for 500 posts in the West Midlands over the next five days.
This means that different medics, in different areas, are being judged according to a different points system.
Confusion is bound to follow – and, who, knows possibly legal action as well from those who lose out when the latest twist in this farce becomes public knowledge.
Stirrer columnist Dr David Nicholl. a neurologist at City Hospital in Birmingham, is on the interview panel assembled by the West Midlands Deanery.
He commented: “Imagine if England were playing Wales at rugby and the referee announced that he was only awarding 5 points for a try rather than 6 points half-way through the game - there would be absolute uproar in the media.
“Yet this isn’t a game of rugby, it is people’s careers that are being messed around like a political rugby football, and it will be patients’ lives that will be affected by this incompetence. It is absolute disgrace”
