MORE than 900 young doctors will start new jobs at Greater Manchester hospitals today - amid claims of `appalling confusion'.
One health union has described the new national recruitment process - which has seen all the new staff start on the same day - as `an unmitigated disaster'.
Some of the doctors come from out of the area - yet the M.E.N. can reveal that 150 junior doctors who trained in the north west have been unable to find work, with just 20 jobs left in local hospitals.
This is because this year, doctors who have trained under both the old and a new system are all applying for jobs at the same time - resulting in 30,000 hopefuls chasing just 15,000 jobs.
In addition, job applications now have to be made through the internet - leaving locally trained doctors having to compete with applicants from all over the country.
Hospital bosses have strongly denied claims by the British Medical Association that the sudden influx of new doctors unfamiliar with their surroundings will lead to cancelled operations. They say they have planned to carry out fewer operations and hold clinics today and are putting extra supervision measures in place.
But local BMA representatives are concerned patient care will suffer, claiming that many young doctors were still being told of last-minute changes to the location and nature of their work this week while, as late as midday yesterday, some still had not been told which shifts they would be working today.
They also claim the official unemployment figures are `wildly optimistic' and say many young doctors have already left the country for posts abroad.
Dr Tom Dolphin, deputy chairman of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee, said: "There has been appalling confusion in the NHS over the last few weeks. No-one knows what's going on.
"The whole recruitment process this year as been an unmitigated disaster. Things most certainly are not sorted out yet, nor will they be for months or years for some individuals."
The BMA says in the past few years there has been a sharp increase in calls from junior doctors without jobs, and they say many are being forced to take one-year contracts which will leave them looking for a training job again next year.
The M.E.N. has spoken to several trainees, too worried about their job prospects to be named, who say they are exhausted having spent the last few months filling out application forms for jobs, which can run to 30 pages each, while working full time and being on call.
Others who have trained in the region have had to choose between accepting a job many miles away from home or trying their luck in the second round of applications in an effort to get a job in the north west.
Disappointed
Kailash Chand of the BMA said: "This whole process has been mismanaged and we are losing some very promising young doctors, we have also lost a lot of the goodwill of doctors who have got jobs. Even a lot of those with offers are disappointed as they will have to leave home and families behind or commute to the other end of a region.
"Two-doctor families are very hard hit and we seem to be regressing to an era when women with children have to give up work until their kids are grown up or give up any chance of a career."
Many of the hospital representatives we spoke to said staff were frantically preparing for the arrival of up to 200 new medics.
A spokesman for Stockport Foundation Trust said they didn't have time to provide us with any figures.
A spokesman for Trafford Healthcare Trust said: "The August 1 influx is a planned-for event and has been for many years, hence activities in clinics and theatres are scheduled to take this into account."
A spokesman for Central Manchester and Manchester Hospitals, which runs Manchester Royal Infirmary, St Mary's and the children's hospitals at Pendlebury and Booth Hall, where 173 doctors new doctors are starting, said staff had spent weeks planning for today.
She said there may be fewer operations taking place but there will be no last-minute cancellations.
A spokesman for Pennine Acute Trust, which runs hospitals in Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and North Manchester and has 200 doctors starting, said: "As of 2pm today there were only three vacancies within the trust and we anticipate these will be filled by the close of play.
"This is always a busy time for the trust and we would expect any disruption to be minimal."
Regional health bosses say they do not anticipate any problems with the new system, which they claim has already achieved a fairer distribution of junior doctors. Prof Jacky Hayden, head of the North Western Deanery which runs medical training, said: "There is evidence that 98 per cent of doctors who have completed their foundation training in the north west have now got further training posts.
"The north west has led nationally and has been the main contributor tocreating career support and advice for junior doctors. Each trust is required to have at least one trained individual to provide this kind of support.
"There were some problems with the Medical Training Application System, which were corrected as they were identified."
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Go Abroard!Many Countries are looking for doctors.Danmark,Norway,Sweden
Leave them to it.
Perhaps the biggest injustice in the implementation of the new training system is the speed at which it has been done. A guillotine has effectively been brought down amongst us & for many the anxt and fear is that the window of opportunity by which to attain one's career aspiration, is rapidly shrinking away. Soon it seems that it will have disappeared completely, much quicker than in the times of yesteryear. Morale is now at an all-time rock bottom with depression rates soaring as demonstrated by a recent survey by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Trusts have been putting out 'suicide alerts' as people are growing to appreciate the strain that many are feeling, and rightly so. Round 2's implementation in many instances just adds insult to injury.
One could argue that whilst all doctors who are not appointed lose out, even some of those who are 'successful' lose out. The work-life balance is drastically offset as more trainees than ever before have to contemplate making huge sacrifices for their careers, relocating their entire family or maybe even having to contemplate splitting apart from loved ones as doctor-partners face employment at opposite poles of the UK. This was less likely to have happened under the old system.
Some contend that those who are about to lose out the most with the new job lottery are the more experienced of the junior doctors who may have already trained for 8,9, 10 or more years and who are indeed destined to become 'The Lost Tribe' of the NHS.
The NHS is in the process of culling off 1000s of part-trained experienced doctors, replacing them with more inexperienced juniors, after spending £1/4million and much dedicated time & effort in training each one of them so far.
For the senior cohort, many are arguably too far down the line in one branch of practice to successfully change specialty from, say, surgery to medicine. They are also ironically deemed 'too experienced' to apply for a training number in their existing field at the place where there is most (but still very little) opportunity.
It seems irrational for junior doctors to not blame the system when faced with evidence such as that presented in a recent survey where it can easily be argued that this year's selection process has actively discriminated against some of the brightest doctors in the job pool. It is likely that many of these doctors will be lost to the UK's training system forever, and without them, the future of the NHS is not as great as it so easily could have been. This is not the fault of the unsuccessful junior doctors! No, this is due to the reckless implementation of a flawed training system, the consequences of which we will all face as we will all be patients one day.
The NHS is about to massively lose-out, 'Murdering Medical Careers' (as it has so aptly been named) is unnecessarily stunting the progression of many good, talented doctors in this brain-drain of a system. It is about time that those of us who haven't already woken up to this very real situation do so. Look out for your Junior Doctors and support them.
Fight for them.
How can hosiptal bosses or ministers know anything more than doctors. Perhaps doctors should be more involved in the logistics of this system?? Or is that just silly?
I have dealt with the registration and training of new Drs from the NHS and GMC side. Simple answer is to give first choice to UK trained Drs. There are too many Drs come here from over seas who are poorly trained and faking qualifications for a good salary. These Drs often only see that being a Dr is a way out of their own country and having a prestigious title, not seeing it as a vocation as many UK trained Drs do.
I agree newmum, keep the priority with UK-trained doctors. There may be a queue of doctors trying to work here from overseas, but it's clearly not helping the situation.
i agree the MTAS system has been a complete administration failure!
i would have to agrue that there has always been very strong competition for Junior Doctor placements and there has always been dissapointed doctors who have had to go abroad etc
Junior Doctors should not expect jobs to literally just land on their laps, there is a spoon fed culture among doctors that needs to be stamped out!
Jobs have never 'just landed on our laps' but competition has always been high, for the best jobs especially, and up until this year's chaos, doctors were selected based on merit often demonstrated in their CVs. Regretably, this year doctors were shortlistsed based on a creative-writing exercise & those who were not successful have less chance of being successful in the future.
Unfortunately the NHS has a monopoly on Junior Doctors in the UK - if we can't secure a training job within the NHS, then unlike in business, we cannot secure a training job in any other field in the UK where we will continue to practice medicine. [The private sector is only available to doctors when they have completed their arduous NHS training or similar overseas.] What else can we do in the UK if through a haphazard implementation of a flawed training system we are unfairly told that we are not allowed to train to deliver to our patients the best of our potential?
The NHS & the state will lose out as 10,000 of us are unfairly excluded from training this year and given massively reduced chances of success in future years. A recent survey (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/debate/letters/article2093366.ece ) has in fact shown that this year's selection process has actively discriminated against some of the brightest Drs in the job pool.
Change over this year have far been the worsted ever!
I really feel for some doctors who were only told late last week that the posts they had been working in, had been filled by the new MTAS recruitment.
I understand MTAS is here to stay and we are all going to have to get used to it!
It is not only Doctors who are losing on on the jobs, think of the clerical staffing paid much less that juniors who are also going to be forced out of jobs as we dont recruit staff anymore and its all done by a computer matching process.
The whole process is appalling !