Junior doctors' training still under fire over MTAS disaster
The Department of Health yesterday reverted to more standard recruitment practices for junior doctors seeking training posts for next year after the chaos that surrounded applications this year.
But more fundamental reforms are needed and will take at least two to three years to implement, according to Sir John Tooke, who headed an independent inquiry into what proved the biggest administrative fiasco in NHS history.
Sir John said there was still no consensus on the educational principles guiding the reform of medical careers and postgraduate training was still hampered "by unclear principles, a weak contractual base, a lack of cohesion, a fragmented structure and, in England, deficient relationships with academia and the service".
The "sorry episode" had caused great distress, he said, as the health department said the national IT system for applications will not be used next year and junior doctors will switch posts on up to three dates in the year rather than just one.
From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f7776594-7601-11dc-b7cb-0000779fd2ac.html
On Sept 13, 2007 Health Direct posted: A terrible way to treat our doctors- Financial Times Comment on MMC's MTAS recruitment disaster
Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) is a suitably Orwellian name for a Stalinist new system for training doctors in the National Health Service. The phrase is a perfect example of newspeak. To oppose a "modern" system is to be a conservative, if not a reactionary.
Yet, like all systems of centralised planning, this one has proved inefficient, inflexible and inhumane. It is an object lesson in the dangers of the ever-growing capture of hitherto autonomous professions and institutions by the state.
What, then, lay behind the fiasco that Modernising Medical Careers has become? There appear to be three causes.
First, the department resolved on seizing control over medical training from the professional colleges and consultants, who happen to know what doctors can (and should be able to) do.
Second, the bureaucrats made a mess of manpower planning: in England, for example, 29,200 doctors have been competing for the 15,600 training places they arbitrarily decided to create.
Third, they chose this moment of upheaval to introduce an inflexible and characteristically defective computerised system (the Medical Training and Application System) to allocate doctors across the country.
Allocations to training posts are within huge geographical areas. But doctors are dispatched, like so much meat, to one hospital. Do they live hours away? That is tough luck. Do they have a partner, or even children? That is just tougher luck. Do they wish to switch hospital or sub-speciality? They must be joking. Do they wish to know the terms and conditions of their employment before arriving? They must reallybe joking.
To put the point bluntly, these highly trained professionals, on whom you may depend for your lives or those of your loved ones, are being treated with contempt. Do you want to be looked after by someone so treated?
No less predictable is the fact that those who made these blunders are still in place. One might have expected resignations, starting with Sir Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer.
So is the NHS suffering from an excess of free market zeal, as many on the left believe? Hardly. Where it matters, the planners are in charge. As always, they are making a big mess and, as almost always, they look likely to get away with it unscathed.
It is not just in this year that failures in labour's centralised, computerised doctor's recruitment emerged. The Department of Health has been aware for over a year that it's incompetence is leading to a road crash.
Eighteen months ago Health Direct posted on March 06, 2006 Junior Doctors' new IT MMC MTAS recruitment system is a disaster
It is an irony that many of the questions junior doctors must answer when they fill in the new form to apply for hospital jobs relate to their leadership skills and ability to work as part of a team. The form is part of a new applications procedure, called Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), which involves no human interaction whatsoever.
Hospitals are banned from holding interviews, having to rely instead upon a computer "dating" system that supposedly matches the applicant to the job.
As 80 eminent doctors have been moved to protest to the Department of Health, the results have been disastrous. Sixty junior doctors recruited in this way have failed to demonstrate a basic level of medical competence, while many others have had to be retrained at huge expense.
But more fundamental reforms are needed and will take at least two to three years to implement, according to Sir John Tooke, who headed an independent inquiry into what proved the biggest administrative fiasco in NHS history.
Sir John said there was still no consensus on the educational principles guiding the reform of medical careers and postgraduate training was still hampered "by unclear principles, a weak contractual base, a lack of cohesion, a fragmented structure and, in England, deficient relationships with academia and the service".
The "sorry episode" had caused great distress, he said, as the health department said the national IT system for applications will not be used next year and junior doctors will switch posts on up to three dates in the year rather than just one.
From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f7776594-7601-11dc-b7cb-0000779fd2ac.html
On Sept 13, 2007 Health Direct posted: A terrible way to treat our doctors- Financial Times Comment on MMC's MTAS recruitment disaster
Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) is a suitably Orwellian name for a Stalinist new system for training doctors in the National Health Service. The phrase is a perfect example of newspeak. To oppose a "modern" system is to be a conservative, if not a reactionary.
Yet, like all systems of centralised planning, this one has proved inefficient, inflexible and inhumane. It is an object lesson in the dangers of the ever-growing capture of hitherto autonomous professions and institutions by the state.
What, then, lay behind the fiasco that Modernising Medical Careers has become? There appear to be three causes.
First, the department resolved on seizing control over medical training from the professional colleges and consultants, who happen to know what doctors can (and should be able to) do.
Second, the bureaucrats made a mess of manpower planning: in England, for example, 29,200 doctors have been competing for the 15,600 training places they arbitrarily decided to create.
Third, they chose this moment of upheaval to introduce an inflexible and characteristically defective computerised system (the Medical Training and Application System) to allocate doctors across the country.
Allocations to training posts are within huge geographical areas. But doctors are dispatched, like so much meat, to one hospital. Do they live hours away? That is tough luck. Do they have a partner, or even children? That is just tougher luck. Do they wish to switch hospital or sub-speciality? They must be joking. Do they wish to know the terms and conditions of their employment before arriving? They must reallybe joking.
To put the point bluntly, these highly trained professionals, on whom you may depend for your lives or those of your loved ones, are being treated with contempt. Do you want to be looked after by someone so treated?
No less predictable is the fact that those who made these blunders are still in place. One might have expected resignations, starting with Sir Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer.
So is the NHS suffering from an excess of free market zeal, as many on the left believe? Hardly. Where it matters, the planners are in charge. As always, they are making a big mess and, as almost always, they look likely to get away with it unscathed.
It is not just in this year that failures in labour's centralised, computerised doctor's recruitment emerged. The Department of Health has been aware for over a year that it's incompetence is leading to a road crash.
Eighteen months ago Health Direct posted on March 06, 2006 Junior Doctors' new IT MMC MTAS recruitment system is a disaster
It is an irony that many of the questions junior doctors must answer when they fill in the new form to apply for hospital jobs relate to their leadership skills and ability to work as part of a team. The form is part of a new applications procedure, called Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), which involves no human interaction whatsoever.
Hospitals are banned from holding interviews, having to rely instead upon a computer "dating" system that supposedly matches the applicant to the job.
As 80 eminent doctors have been moved to protest to the Department of Health, the results have been disastrous. Sixty junior doctors recruited in this way have failed to demonstrate a basic level of medical competence, while many others have had to be retrained at huge expense.
Labels: Doctors, DoH, health direct, Junior Doctors, Labour shambles, MMC, MTAS
posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic at
9:16 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home