The initial aim of modernising medical careers (MMC) was laudible;
that every junior doctor's post should be in an established training
programme with aims and objectives. What was not apparent to me at least
was how this process should relate to specialist registrar (SpR) training
in, for example, mainstream specialities such as medicine and surgery and
how both MMC and SpR training should relate to entry into sub-specialty
training. Was, for example, general acute medicine training to be
completed first with some electing to remain as acute medicine specialists
while others sought sub-specialty training? It appeared so for a while and
then not.
Rapid evolution has led to a system of selecting trainees for
combined sub-specialty and general training but at a much earlier stage of
their career and experience than applied in competition for national
training numbers. It appears odd that selection for postgraduate medical
training, as currently organised, leads to major career decisions very
early after graduation with comparitively little clinical experience and
exposure. Particularly when, in relation to schooling, restrictive choices
at early stages of school career are viewed as a bad thing.
The process newly instituted for selecting trainees uses a method
that did not seem to have been carefully assessed by canvassing the views
of junior doctors and those who have been recently involved in recruitment
before starting it nationally for real. The method chosen actively
prevents the use of previously accepted, useful criteria such as markers
of academic excellence and encourages the use of dubious practices that
are similarly employed by students seeking undergraduate university entry.
Profesor Morris Brown and many others have decried the recently
launched selection process and I would join them, demanding that the
recruitment process be urgently reviewed. Change and change and change
again has been visited on the health service. Our junior doctors and our
patients deserve better than MITAS mark I.
Competing interests:
Being sufficiently old that I may need the ministrations of junior hospital doctors for some life threatening emergency and so want them to be the best there are.
Competing interests:
No competing interests
20 March 2007
stephen g wright
consultant physician, hospital for tropical diseases, uclh nhs foundation trust
Rapid Response:
Raging against MITAS
The initial aim of modernising medical careers (MMC) was laudible; that every junior doctor's post should be in an established training programme with aims and objectives. What was not apparent to me at least was how this process should relate to specialist registrar (SpR) training in, for example, mainstream specialities such as medicine and surgery and how both MMC and SpR training should relate to entry into sub-specialty training. Was, for example, general acute medicine training to be completed first with some electing to remain as acute medicine specialists while others sought sub-specialty training? It appeared so for a while and then not.
Rapid evolution has led to a system of selecting trainees for combined sub-specialty and general training but at a much earlier stage of their career and experience than applied in competition for national training numbers. It appears odd that selection for postgraduate medical training, as currently organised, leads to major career decisions very early after graduation with comparitively little clinical experience and exposure. Particularly when, in relation to schooling, restrictive choices at early stages of school career are viewed as a bad thing.
The process newly instituted for selecting trainees uses a method that did not seem to have been carefully assessed by canvassing the views of junior doctors and those who have been recently involved in recruitment before starting it nationally for real. The method chosen actively prevents the use of previously accepted, useful criteria such as markers of academic excellence and encourages the use of dubious practices that are similarly employed by students seeking undergraduate university entry.
Profesor Morris Brown and many others have decried the recently launched selection process and I would join them, demanding that the recruitment process be urgently reviewed. Change and change and change again has been visited on the health service. Our junior doctors and our patients deserve better than MITAS mark I.
Competing interests: Being sufficiently old that I may need the ministrations of junior hospital doctors for some life threatening emergency and so want them to be the best there are.
Competing interests: No competing interests