Junior doctors to work overseas?
Updated on 20 April 2007
The NHS is suggesting that junior doctors who can't find jobs here take their expensive training and volunteer for charity overseas.
A spell volunteering in the African bush or an Indian village is considered life-enhancing. But not meant to be a solution to mass unemployment.
Yet a leaked document reveals that the Government has approached the charity VSO as it seeks a solution to the thousands of junior doctors who could be left unemployed following the training fiasco.
This is just the latest in the controversy over the new Medical Training Application Service or MTAS - a computer system launched in January to recruit junior doctors. Not only did it keep crashing and list the wrong jobs it couldn't match the best candidates to vacancies. And there were more than 33,000 applications for just over 18,000 posts.
"Let me take the opportunity to refer to the thoroughly misleading statements made in recent weeks about the prospect of thousands of junior doctors finding themselves without work. That is complete nonsense."- Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt
In the House of Commons on Monday the Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was forced to issue an apology for the distress it has caused. But she denied thousand of juniors will be left unemployed
"Let me take the opportunity to refer to the thoroughly misleading statements made in recent weeks about the prospect of thousands of junior doctors finding themselves without work. That is complete nonsense." - Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt
But the leaked document reveals officially for the first time the sheer scale of the problem. It was prepared by NHS Employers, who represent health service managers, for the MTAS review group
Doctors at Risk
Channel 4 News has seen a leaked version of the document. Extracts read:
'There is an excess of applicants for training posts over places ... by about 10,000'
'There is a range of doctors at risk'.
Download and read the document here:
"
Modernising medical careers - Maximising employment opportunities" (Word document)
There is, it says, an excess of applicants for training posts over places - 10,000 in fact.
They go on to say this figure will reduce once clinical attachments, or professional locums are taken out of the equation
But it says there is a range of doctors at riskNHS Employers said the leak was disappointing and added that there were many and wide-ranging issues being considered.
"I think it is very worrying that the number of doctors may be at risk of not having a job in August." - Jo Hilborne, BMA Junior Doctors Committee.
The British Medical Association and other junior doctors groups like Remedy UK will not let this lie. In fact next week the BMA will release figures showing just how many junior doctors are planning to go abroad if they do not get posts - that figure is said to worryingly high.
And the protest continues - while the department of health today once again denied thousands of doctors will be unemployed Ministers will next week face an Opposition debate in Parliament on precisely this issue - and will be expected to explain this latest figure of 10,000.
