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Labour to make 8000 junior doctors unemployed (approx. a quarter of the junior doctor workforce)

Posted by Richard999 on Thursday, 01 March 2007 23:01:27

Dear Mr David Cameron MP

Labour to make 8000 junior doctors unemployed (Approx. a quarter of the NHS junior doctor workforce)

I would like to highlight an opportunity for you to gain several thousand extra votes if you can call the Government to task on the following issue. (If you can get the general public to take an interest through the TV News, then this is a General Election winner. At least you may be able to get Patricia Hewitt to resign. Presently the Public don't really know about this because, with the exception perhaps of Channel 4 News, the labour controlled BBC and media are not interested and there is very little publicity.

I don't know if you are aware but this Government is about to make about 8000 junior doctors unemployed! This is difficult to believe but the process has already begun with the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) going live recently. Through a computer system that has been plagued with problems, about (minimum) 8000 out of 32000 junior doctors, some with 6+ years of training (paid for by the tax-payer) are being thrown on the scrap heap and there is a real risk of not being enough employed doctors to cover hospitals in August 2007.

These doctors have given their lives to medicine and now they are being utterly betrayed by this Government. Junior doctors actually RUN hospitals in that they keep the service going. You only have to look at the comments on doctors.net.uk (where there are over a hundred thousand members) to understand the utter disaster that is about to happen. The NHS is NOT SAFE in Labour hands. There are talks of a strike/ working to rule/ refusing to sign death certificates so that mortuaries fill up.

The cost of training a medical student is 250,000 each and then another 5 years of training probably costs another 250,000 pounds. If, say, only 5000 doctors are unemployed after this process then 1,250,000,000 (1.25 billion pounds) will have been wasted (more than the current published NHS debt).

These talented people who would have been our surgeons and physicians of the future will either leave the country or quit medicine to get a job to pay the mortgage. The general public have NO IDEA that this is happening because no-one seems to care and Labour have done a fantastic job of keeping it quiet. It is a scandal on a par with the recent Home Office debacles, if not worse. The BMA does everything this Labour Government tells them even if patient care is adversely affected so they have said little. So many doctors have lost faith in the BMA that a new body to represent doctors has been started up (called Remedyuk).

I have written to my local LABOUR MP James Plaskitt twice about this utterly disgraceful waste of talent and tax payers' money. Understandably he is not interested in highlighting this problem because he a Labour Politician. He simply sent back lukewarm standard replies from Lord Warner who has presided over this disaster (which is called MMC or Modernising Medical Careers for your information).

I urge you in the strongest terms to take an interest in this problem- it is a vote winner for you and a scandal of a proportion never before encountered in the NHS. The money being wasted is important but not as important as the waste of talent, the waste of trained doctors moving abroad, the damage it will do to future healthcare and recruitment (who in their right mind will want to be a doctor paying 3000 tuition fees for 5-6 years and graduating to a system that scraps them after 6 years of training) and the detrimental effects it will surely have on patient care.

Remedy UK have organised a march on 17 March in London starting at the Royal College of Physicians and ending at the Royal College of Surgeons at Lincolns Inn Fields (THE "MARCH IN MARCH"). Would it be in your interests to perhaps do a speech about this problem to coincide with the obvious media attention it will draw? Perhaps you should ask the Government about it at PMQs because once you talk about it, the entire country will be listening and it is a definite vote winner.

I am happy to talk/correspond with anyone in the Conservative party about this.

kind regards

Mr Richard A. McMahon MBBS BSc hons MRCS

Neurosurgery SHO

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Posted by scrubsupwell on Thursday, 01 March 2007 23:33:54

Rest assured the idea will fall flat even though the government stealth on this resulted in only a few thousand signatures. Doctors perform many roles in our lives and the government relies on doctors opinions.

The responsibility for medical training should remain with medical Royal Colleges e.g. Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of Surgeons etc.

It was a junior doctor that gave my grand-father another two years of life diagnosing cancer of the upper bowel which was previously diagnosed as 'irritable bowel syndrome' by a general practitioner. I owe everything to that young house doctor. I will fight 'tooth and nail for this ridiculous idea to be 'put to bed'.

I advise everyone should watch the report here:

http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=4531
I will certainly be on the march in March. Thankyou Richard for highlighting this bullying of the BMA by Labouristic elements.

 

Comment edited by scrubsupwell on Thursday, 01 March 2007 23:45:25

Posted by Tizzy on Friday, 02 March 2007 00:19:12

A complete disgrace. The waste of money is one thing but the waste of human investment is wholly unjustifiable. Good luck with the march, but is it already too late?

BTW, scrubs, exactly the same happened with my mother as with your grandfather. My sympathies.

Posted by loimy on Friday, 02 March 2007 01:55:04

Let's hope we can make more of the public aware of the debacle that junior doctors are being forced into in terms of the future of medical and surgical training.

The Telegraph are running a front page article on this issue and there are plans for more media coverage, but we need more people to be aware of the very real problems at the the grassroots level of the NHS.

Posted by jfdwolff on Friday, 02 March 2007 07:10:42

From sources I have learnt that some consultants processing applications through the MTAS system had to work under immense time pressure, and a time figure of 60 seconds per application was quoted.

As an application on MTAS is the only way of securing ongoing medical training and employment in the UK, I and all my fellow applicants have spent many hours on these applications, choosing the best wording to describe our training, experience and affinity with the field to fit an arbitrarily imposed word limit.

To now have these applications (which are probably quite similar, because people know which words to choose) read diagonally by a sleep-deprived and probably slightly bored consultant is not only unlikely to select the most suitable candidates, but also an obvious insult to someone who has been to medical school for 4-5 years, worked for the NHS for at least 3 years and often has higher degrees, performed medical research and otherwise contributed to life in this country.

MMC was touted as a solution for the "unfinished business" of medical postgraduate training in the United Kingdom (2004 DOH report). However, it is now clear that it has created more problems than it solves, has further dented morale of junior doctors in the UK, and is likely to lead to many doctors - even highly experienced advanced trainees - moving abroad or leaving the profession.

Posted by drdan on Friday, 02 March 2007 08:36:48

The amount of tax payers money that is being wasted on doctors who are forced to leave the UK to find jobs is scandalous. The public also have growing sympathy for the plight of affected junior doctors, particularly in light of the government's attempted wholesale privatisation of the NHS.

Patricia Hewett tells us that patients are receiving better care than ever, and that are hospitals are better resourced than ever - but does anyone but the Labour party actually believe this delusion?

Posted by jtjbooth on Friday, 02 March 2007 08:46:09

These changes represent an enormous threat to the future of the health service in the UK. We currently have the highest standards of training here in the UK; these changes put that under immense threat. The implementation of MMC is a debacle on a colossal scale, and the cost is not just to the thousands of young doctors who have had their careers destroyed, or the millions spent and now wasted on their training but also to the people of Brtiain who are going to see falling standards in the training programmes for the doctors who will be treating them in the future.

Dr James Booth MBBS BSc MRCGP

GP, Chelmsford

Posted by jpow112 on Friday, 02 March 2007 09:00:51

This is another massive step towards the deconstruction of the NHS, the dismantlement of the NHS establishment. It is attempting to destroy the essential culture of NHS medicine.

The MTAS process only makes sense if viewed as a clumsy and hugely expensive way of creating medical unemployment, and reduced morale. This is in order to create a more servile and emasculated medical profession, as a prelude for further privatization.

We are not going to get away with repeatedly saying that the Emperor has no clothes.

The Best Year Ever for the NHS!

Posted by ellie on Friday, 02 March 2007 10:14:59

I am saddened by this whole shambles. I am a surgical registrar in the Trent region and thankfully not directly affected by this particular government mess. However I have several excellant juniors who have not been offered a single interview. The MTAS selection proceedure is deeply flawed and has been plagued with technical problems. I am marching on the 17th to show my disgust and because I must make a stand. I have always supported the Conservative party - please Mr Cameron, show us your support now.

Posted by jfletcher on Friday, 02 March 2007 10:17:46

Whatever the ideological differences, the one thing the British electorate can increasingly agree upon is the grotesque incompetence of this government. Nothing illustrates this more starkly than the MMC debacle. The lives and careers of tens of thousands of of young professional people are at risk. If the tory party is looking for a 'unique selling proposition', then make your goal the restoration of simple, basic competence to public life - and you can start by championing the cause of the junior doctors.


Dr Jeremy Fletcher MB MA MRCP MD

Consultant Physician, Chelmsford

Posted by jamas on Friday, 02 March 2007 10:34:49

'The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’ The 'evil' that is MMC is destroying lives of junior doctors and their families. The media have been surprisingly quiet in recent months despite the prospect of an estimated 6-8,000 unemployed doctors as a direct result of this new system (a figure fervently denied by the government but now becoming stark reality). In any other profession, the merest hint of unemployment figures in the hundreds would spark a media outcry. Thousands of unemployed doctors, it seems, is not deemed worthy of any significant response. Surely now is the time for a stand to be made against this debacle. (apologies to Edmund Burke)

Mr James H Davenport MBChB MRCS(Eng.)

SHO Trauma & Orthopaedics (soon to be unemployed)

Posted by matty555 on Friday, 02 March 2007 10:37:30

When is somebody going to listen and act?
Is David Cameron the peoples' champion?

Posted by Drandyp on Friday, 02 March 2007 10:45:12

This is not only a shocking waste of resources and a slap in the face for many dedicated professionals but will also cause deaths, both of patients and doctors. If you were a patient would you rather be operated on by a 'fast track' surgeon with 30,000 hours of experience or a traditionally trained consultant with more than double the experience?

Some of the 8000 unemployed doctors are bound to be driven to desperate measures, as would most people with their livelihood snatched away, God forbid this should include suicide but if it does the blood will be indelibly etched into the hands of Tony Blair and Patricia Hewitt.

Posted by wombat on Friday, 02 March 2007 10:45:45

What I especially love about all this, is that they only expanded the medical schools a few years back in order to increase the number of doctors... and now, they get rid of several thousand of us.

I just love the long-term planning! I'm almost tempted to vote Tory next time!

Dr Caris Grimes

Posted by asedali on Friday, 02 March 2007 10:48:46

Dear Mr Cameron,

Please, please look into this. This is a death-blow to the NHS and the medical profession as a whole. Any fool could tell you that if you try and contract a 10-year training scheme into 7-years, you're going to squeeze out 3-years worth of trainees. This is exactly what has happened.

The BMA Junior Doctors Committee has pleaded with the Government to delay this system but to no avail. The vast majority of consultants have been very critical of the system and there is no desire to adopt this system. As is the hallmark of this dysfunctional government led by an arrogant, non-consulting and non-caring cabinet and Labour party, they have carried on imposing this from above without any consideration as to the wishes of the profession. We now have a disaster the like of which our profession has not seen in modern times.

I fear it is already nearly too late to do anything, please look into this as a matter of urgency.

Best wishes.

A Ali

Posted by MahbublAhmed on Friday, 02 March 2007 10:55:04

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