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              Hewitt branded ‘incompetent’ in junior doctors row
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, faced fresh calls to resign today over the fiasco surrounding the controversial online application system for junior doctors, which has left thousands without jobs. The shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, branded the online Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) “a truly shocking piece of incompetence”, while the shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, warned Ms Hewitt not to “shirk” her responsibility for it. Their comments came as Ms Hewitt explained to MPs why she announced yesterday that the computerised application process was being suspended for the rest of the year. She said all initial offers under round one of the system would be made to junior doctors in the next few weeks. She denied that MTAS had been abandoned but confirmed it will no longer be used for round two of the recruitment process. Round two will now be CV-based, with junior doctors applying to the medical deaneries that oversee local training. The health secretary - in her third Commons statement on the issue in two months - said extra training posts would be available for those doctors who were unsuccessful in round one of MTAS. She said: “There will therefore be further substantial opportunities for those who are not successful initially.” Ms Hewitt added that it was currently impossible to say how many junior doctors had been allocated posts under the system, nor how many would be left without a job. She said these figures would only be apparent when the first round of the recruitment process ended in June. The online application process has been criticised by doctors’ group s for giving more weight to a crude personality test than to evidence of candidates’ medical ability. Mr Lansley said that junior doctors were “being treated in a way that is appalling”. He said it was unacceptable that thousands of doctors still did not know where they would be working on August 1 - the deadline for them to be in a post. “Even at this late stage, they do not know where they will be working on August 1. It may be anywhere from Cromer to St Albans, ” he told Ms Hewitt. “You can’t shirk responsibility in this. You have to take responsibility for it. Will you now understand that the only way to do that is to resign.” Mr Lansley warned that if the situation was not resolved soon, hundreds of doctors could take up posts overseas to the detriment of the NHS. His comments came as a judicial review of the computerised application process opened in the high court. The doctors’ pressure group, Remedy UK, which initiated the review, wants the Department of Health to put in place a “rescue package” for the thousands of junior doctors who have not got any job interviews as a result of the flawed system. Remedy UK spokesman, Dr Matt Jameson Evans, said those doctors who had failed to find posts under MTAS should be offered temporary training posts of around six months until the flaws in the application process were resolved. He said: “What we’re calling for is a damage limitation exercise to deal with the arbitrary nature of the selection process. We must make sure that the 10,000-15,000 junior doctors who weren’t successful are not shut out of the medical profession for life.” A Department of Health spokesman said it could not comment on the judicial review until it was concluded. The application system provoked outrage in March, when it emerged that hundreds of the ablest junior doctors were not selected for any interviews. Ms Hewitt adjusted the process to give everyone another chance but the system was further discredited by a security leak that may have allowed intimate personal information to become accessible on the MTAS website. Ms Hewitt said there may have been criminal offences; a report on the leak had been passed to the police. The alleged breaches are understood to relate to how personal information about junior doctors came to be seen by reporters. Have Your Say: Hewitt branded ‘incompetent’ in junior doctors row Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. Related News
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