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Protesting doctors make their feelings known to ministers during the action outside parliament
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Doctors fight for jobs in parliament protest
Medics’ fears over proposed employment reforms
HUNDREDS of irate doctors lobbied parliament this week in a bid to overturn a government application scheme they claim will destroy the health service.
In a follow-up to last month’s 12,000-strong march through the centre of London, doctors, consultants and registrars gathered in Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday morning to protest about the “shambolic” system that could leave thousands of them unemployed.
The Modernising Medical Careers scheme (MMC), which government ministers claim will revamp the current training and employment of doctors in the UK, has been heavily criticised for its “fatally flawed and bitterly unfair” IT selection process, the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS).
In addition to this, doctors are worried about the “one shot for life” rule the new system provokes, in which those who do not get on to the training ladder in August will lose out on all posts for the rest of their career.
Roland Walker, a senior house doctor at St Thomas’s, said: “Guys that don’t get on to the ladder won’t get anywhere.
“If you miss a stage one post then you won’t be considered for a stage two post next year, but all the stage one posts will go to next year’s graduates.
“It’s the big bang in August 07 – if you’re not on a training ladder then that’s it.”
The British Medical Association currently estimates there are 34,250 doctors applying for just 18,500 UK training posts, meaning that when the posts are reallocated on August 1 one in every two doctors in the UK will be left unemployed.
The group behind the rally, RemedyUK, are taking their case to court this week, but some doctors are concerned that, despite the campaigning, no one has yet come up with a solution.
Saket Tibrewal, a registrar at St Thomas’s, said: “Morale has never been lower. None of us are politicians but now we’ve all been made part of one big political game.”
Politicians joined doctors to speak at the event, before the medics took their cause inside parliament to lobby their MPs.
Andrew Lansley, Conservative Shadow minister for Health, said the government was considering creating more training posts, in direct contrast to what they had stated previously.
There have also been rumours that doctors may be drafted abroad to work with the VSO as a “rescue plan”.
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