Your recent editorial ‘Why the UK’s Medical Training Application
Service failed’ (1) did not address one very important aspect of the
problem. From the point of view of doctors with families (male or female),
the inflexibility of the MTAS system is unacceptable. No longer can
doctors apply for individual training posts: what they are offered is a
post in a region. The actual job could be anywhere in a huge geographical
area. Currently, once doctors have accepted a position in the area, they
are not allowed to decline the actual job without being penalised. This
can lead to major family problems.
For example, we know of a junior doctor whose family is in
Cambridge. She was not shortlisted for Cambridge, but has an interview for
a ‘London rotation’. Were she to receive a job offer in Bognor Regis or
Brighton for example, which form part of the 'London rotation', she would
be forced to decline the offer. She would also have to decline an offer
from Oxford and Severn, the other two regions for which she was
shortlisted.
This is an appalling aspect of the system. We must have a process
where doctors can apply for jobs at particular hospitals. This has to be
the fundamental principle from which any acceptable system will develop.
Doctors have become anonymous cogs in a giant machine – they don’t
know for whom they are going to work, and the people administering the
system appear not to care in the slightest. All they are concerned about
is fitting all the cogs (the junior doctors) into this impersonal machine
(the current NHS).
As a partial solution to the current debacle, doctors must not be
penalised for declining offers, and must be eligible to enter round 2, if
they so wish.
Clarissa Fabre
Honorary Secretary,
Medical Women’s Federation
Tavistock House North,
Tavistock Square,
London
WC1H 9HX
Rapid Response:
raging against MTAS
Your recent editorial ‘Why the UK’s Medical Training Application
Service failed’ (1) did not address one very important aspect of the
problem. From the point of view of doctors with families (male or female),
the inflexibility of the MTAS system is unacceptable. No longer can
doctors apply for individual training posts: what they are offered is a
post in a region. The actual job could be anywhere in a huge geographical
area. Currently, once doctors have accepted a position in the area, they
are not allowed to decline the actual job without being penalised. This
can lead to major family problems.
For example, we know of a junior doctor whose family is in
Cambridge. She was not shortlisted for Cambridge, but has an interview for
a ‘London rotation’. Were she to receive a job offer in Bognor Regis or
Brighton for example, which form part of the 'London rotation', she would
be forced to decline the offer. She would also have to decline an offer
from Oxford and Severn, the other two regions for which she was
shortlisted.
This is an appalling aspect of the system. We must have a process
where doctors can apply for jobs at particular hospitals. This has to be
the fundamental principle from which any acceptable system will develop.
Doctors have become anonymous cogs in a giant machine – they don’t
know for whom they are going to work, and the people administering the
system appear not to care in the slightest. All they are concerned about
is fitting all the cogs (the junior doctors) into this impersonal machine
(the current NHS).
As a partial solution to the current debacle, doctors must not be
penalised for declining offers, and must be eligible to enter round 2, if
they so wish.
Clarissa Fabre
Honorary Secretary,
Medical Women’s Federation
Tavistock House North,
Tavistock Square,
London
WC1H 9HX
admin.mwf@btconnect.com
www.medicalwomensfederation.org.uk
1. Why the UK’s Medical Training Application Service failed BMJ
2007; 334: 543.(17 March)
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests