I heard it through the grapevine...

I can find very few people who think that MMC was a good idea, but still, the juggernaught rolls on, messing up the lives of junior doctors and causing untold stress. One of its so-called "advantages" was to give us a fairer, cheaper and more stream-lined recruitment process so that

a) Hospitals would employ the highest quality junior doctors to look after their patients

b) Junior doctors would have a transparant method of apply for training jobs and be able to compete on a level playing field.

After the MTAS fiasco in 2007, we were told that the recruitment process was going to be sorted out and that the system would ensure that the best doctors are appointed to jobs and that no patients would come to harm because of the changes that MMC brought in.

Do you think that these lofty aspirations have been attained? Let me tell you what I'm hearing through the grapevine.

What the consultants are saying:

“We’re really worried about what we are going to do in August. When the current batch of junior doctors moves on, we’re concerned that there’ll be no one to replace them. The deanery are meant to be sorting out appointing people and hiring SHOs and registrars, but they’re telling us that we’re only going to be given a couple of each. How on earth are we supposed to run a service and an on-call rota with three SHOs and two registrars? It’s ridiculous. We’ve tried advertising for non-training junior doctors, but nobody seems to want those jobs, so we never get any applicants. Who’s going to look after the patients? We’re all really worried. There’s a crisis coming and we don’t seem to be able to do anything to prevent it.”

What the deanery are saying:

“We’ve advertised for people, but we don’t seem to be getting many applicants for the jobs. Some of the people we do get applying for these jobs are certainly, shall we say… inappropriate. We can’t appoint people to positions we don’t think they’re qualified for. For some reason, there’s a shortage of decent quality junior doctors that we can give our SHO and registrar jobs to. All we can do is keep trying to advertise, but I don’t see how things can improve.”

What the junior doctors are saying.

“I somehow have to find myself a registrar job for August, but it’s really difficult to actually find where these jobs are advertised. You used to just be able to look at the BMJ for job adverts, but now you have to search every day on each of the 16 deanery websites. The websites are often un-navigable and confusing. Half of them, you have to register with – which is a hassle - but, even then, they still don’t tell you when they have the jobs out.

“Then the application forms are all different and they take a couple of days to fill in. Then after all that, you know that there’ll only be one or two jobs in the whole area and they’ve probably already been promised to “local candidates” anyway. You just get really disheartened after a while and feel like giving up. I don’t understand why they make it so difficult to even apply for the jobs in the first place. I think it must be some sort of screening mechanism. You know ‘if you can find the application form – then you’ve done most of the hard work and we’ll probably offer you a job!’”

So there you have it - MMC a fair and transparent way to ensure that the best junior doctor are appointed to training jobs. The system is working well!