Junior doctors have withdrawn from the government established review body set up to try to resolve the failures of the flawed and unfair online specialist training post application system that threatens to leave up to 15,000 doctors without training jobs.
The British Medical Association (BMA) Junior doctors Committee (JDC) withdrew from the review group looking at the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) after the latest solutions proposed in the group were unacceptable to the JDC.
Under the proposed solution, doctors would be restricted to one interview.
BMA research indicates that this could disadvantage over 11,000 doctors who have been offered more than one interview.
The JDC believes there are now only two acceptable solutions – for all doctors to be interviewed for all the posts they applied for, or for the whole system to be replaced.
Dr Jo Hilborne, chairman of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee, said yesterday: ‘We have worked hard with the review group to find a solution which would select the best doctors for the right jobs in a fair way.
‘However, we cannot sign up to what has been proposed.
‘Restricting doctors to one interview would not be acceptable to the 11,000 applicants who have already been offered more than one, and would now see these opportunities taken away.
‘Anything that is not fair on junior doctors will crush morale and drive many away from the NHS.
‘We will continue to express to the government the urgency of a solution that is acceptable to 33,000 increasingly angry doctors whose careers have been jeopardised by this shambles of a system.’
The Chairman of the Northern Ireland BMA Junior Doctors Committee Dr Rajesh Rajendran added: ‘This is a sad day for the medical profession.
‘We are still trying to ascertain how many doctors in Northern Ireland have been affected by the problems with this new UK-wide recruitment system.
‘We do know of very well qualified junior doctors here who have not been able to get an interview anywhere in the UK.
‘This is not only bad news for doctors but also for patients.
‘Junior doctors are the senior doctors of the future; if patients are to have an NHS staffed by the best doctors, then the current system of recruitment, which denies highly qualified medics access to their specialised training, must be changed or halted.’
In view of the decision of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee, the chairman of the BMA Consultants Committee will also cease his attendance at the review group meetings.
The BMA noted that 1,433 junior doctors who had applied for posts through MTAS responded to a survey on the BMA website.
The results showed that 526 respondents (37 per cent) had been offered no interviews, 388 (27 per cent) had been offered one, and 519 (36 per cent) had been offered two, three, or four, and would therefore lose opportunities under the review group proposals.
Extrapolated on the basis of the 33,000 total MTAS applications, this would equate to 11,880 who will not get interviews.
However, stressed the BMA, it is likely that the figure is higher than this as doctors with no interview offers would be most likely to respond.
