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LETTERS: Natalie M Green "Tell me the positives of MTAS" BMJ 2007; 334: 601-a [Full text]

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Tell me the positives of the old system

M Justin S Zaman   (5 April 2007)

Re: Tell me the positives of the old system

Karen Howells   (6 April 2007)

Tell me the positives of the old system 5 April 2007
M Justin S Zaman, Clinical Research Fellow University College London Send response to journal: Re: Tell me the positives of the old system	I agree MTAS is unfair and utterly nondiscriminatory - like 99.9% of the medical community - but let me take you back to the 'good old days', when you could get a job if: - if you took all three consultants out on the unit separately over three days for dinner beforehand - if you complained of irritable bowel, and had a colonoscopy under the surgeon you wanted to work for - if you trained at Oxbridge irrespective of anything else on your CV - if you had trained at the medical school of the hospital you were applying for as opposed to another medical school - if your name was not 'foreign'-sounding These are all true memories accrued from my friends and myself. As much as MTAS is not the solution, let us not go back to the old way. We need a full application form that highlights the acheivements, ability and ambition of the applicant fully, a fair interview process and no 'hidden' selection criteria that make you feel rejected as soon as walk into the interview room. Competing interests: I already have a National Training Number in Cardiology from 2002
Re: Tell me the positives of the old system 6 April 2007
Karen Howells, nurse,currently unemployed Lonodn Send response to journal: Re: Re: Tell me the positives of the old system	May I add to Dr Zaman's useful illustration of pre-MTAS appointment of doctors. -if one is from a foreign nation, then offering and arranging Consultants to attend all expenses paid 'educational meetings/lecture tours' in some affluent parts of the world with luxurious treatment thrown in simply as a gestutre of goodwill is a another well known medthod of securing one's medical career. It is clear that computerised assessments of applicants such as the MTAS system was created to prevent or minimise unjust and unfair practices like the ones Dr Zaman had identified. However, implementation of MTAS may well have put a goup of applicants at some distinct disadvantage but surely, that alone is unsufficient to discredit MTAS fully or advocate scrapping of it in its entirety. Medical profession would not be able to modernise itself if it continues to demand reverting to archaic,discriminatory and 'old boy network' type practices, though that might be the desire of many. Competing interests: None declared