UK NEWS
JUNIOR DOCTORS CRISIS
A rally back in April to protest over the Junior doctor crisis
By Lucy Johnston and Martyn Halle
PATIENTS’ lives will be put at risk by the controversial re-organisation of junior doctor training, the Government was warned last night.
Leaked Department of Health documents shown to the Sunday Express reveal thousands of posts for trainee consultants remain unfilled.
With just four weeks to go before trainee doctors were due to take up their posts, it is clear that the NHS is facing a new crisis.
The DoH dossier shows that only 75 per cent of junior doctor training posts have been filled in time for August 1.
Managers and senior consultants are already preparing contingency measures that will see many hospitals postponing routine surgery indefinitely.
Some trusts have asked senior staff to cancel leave at the beginning of August to supervise junior doctors and help cover the gaps caused by a failure to fill vacancies.
Without sufficient trainees, it will be unsafe for many hospitals to perform surgery, so only emergency cases will be treated. The documents were obtained by Remedy, a junior doctors group.
Remedy spokesman Dr Mark Jameson Evans said: “Patients are bound to suffer. If they have a group of doctors totally new to a hospital, we could see lives lost.”
A senior consultant responsible for training told the Sunday Express: “Nobody can ever recall so many training posts remaining unfilled at this stage of the year. We will have to cut back on surgery to cope. I worry for the lives of patients.”
Opposition politicians and junior doctors’ leaders said the situation had been caused by DoH “incompetence”. And they worry there could be a repetition next year unless changes are urgently made to the new system.
The crisis has occurred because the DoH tried to streamline the process for appointing junior doctors to training posts to become consultants.
It switched from a letter of application, accompanied by a CV, to an online application process. But the new system has been beset with problems including the website crashing under the pressure of thousands of junior doctors trying to access it at the same time.
Not only could the system not cope with demand, doctors argued that it was badly organised and failed to draw out applicants’ relevant expertise.
It was claimed that non-medically qualified staff were involved in the recruitment process, while consultants had insufficient time to shortlist applicants fairly.
There was also evidence that many able doctors had not been offered interviews at all.
Most experts in the field have attacked the system as disastrous. They say all the training posts should have been filled weeks ago.
Dr Jameson Evans added: “August always used to be a bad time to get admitted to hospital for emergency treatment because of junior doctors moving to new jobs and not knowing the ropes.”
The leaked documents show more than a third of 15,000 training posts are vacant.
In Wessex, only half of posts have been filled, while in the West Midlands and Severn areas only 64 per cent of posts are covered. London has 20 per cent unfilled.
The DoH played down the crisis, saying: “Final figures for the end of Round One recruitment are currently being finalised. Speculating about them can be very misleading.”
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