A new report published this week has condemned government reforms introduced as part of the Modernising Medical Careers programme (MMC). The Tooke review concludes that the MMC has failed to give young doctors the best possible opportunity choose career paths that fit their skills and passions. Moreover, deaneries are not getting all the information they need to select the most able candidates.
Stunningly, the report concludes that the government has been so incompetent over its handling of medical careers that it recommends that it be taken out of its ands and put into the control of independent experts.
The report has been welcomed by medical bodies. The Royal College of Surgeons says:
"This report must not be allowed to linger on Whitehall desks, its recommendations must be acted on immediately. The unified voice of the medical profession has overwhelmingly endorsed these recommendations and this cannot be ignored. It would be unforgivable if arrangements for specialty medical training were delayed or lost by being subsumed into wider-ranging reform proposals for the NHS."
Mark Garnier, Wyre Forest's Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman, said:
"I despair of this government. Yet again, we see incompetence ruling the day. We all know they have made a mess of the delivery of service; allowing hospital borne infections to go up; closing A+E departments and hospitals all over the country; sacking professionals; and reorganising the service umpteen times for the sake of a newspaper headline. But their latest round of meddling has caused chaos in the profession and steered many an aspiring doctor's career onto the rocks.
"David Cameron is leading the campaign to put this right and I fully support his initiative. Yet again we are given hard, independent evidence that the labour government's time is up."
Commenting on the latest health fiasco, retired Wolverley GP Dr Jan Adams said :"Britain's training of doctors used to be renowned and respected around the world. Now, under this government, it has reached such a state of crisis that it has to be taken out of the hands of the department of health. The Tooke report argues what doctors have been saying for ages, that the Modernising Medical Careers initiative, trumpeted by the government less than a year ago, is such a disaster that it shows that the Department of Health should no longer be involved in doctor training or selection at all.
"After six years of training and a cost of hundreds of thousands to the nation it is very sad and mad that these young doctors are not able to find the job that they were trained for. It is time the Government stopped trying to run things from Whitehall and let the professionals get on with the job."
A recently employed doctor who went through the process last year, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "The Government has completely mismanaged doctor's training. Many of us cannot get the training opportunities we need and many doctors and nurses will be unemployed. Given that we each cost £250,000 to train, this is a colossal waste both of our hard work and of taxpayers money.
"I have been one of the lucky few, most estimates indicate that between 10,000 and 15,000 UK trained doctors will be unemployed in August resulting in a waste of between £2.5 billion and £3 billion which makes the millennium dome look like a bargain."