Friday 25 May 2007

Cutting comments


The President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Bernard Ribiero, has withdrawn from ongoing discussions about the selection of junior doctors. His actions may be a little late for some people, but it is indeed better late than never. He was pretty damning in his comments:

“Almost two years after first raising my concerns, there is still no recognition whatsoever by the DoH of the scale of this problem or its profound implications, far less the prospect of an acceptable solution in terms of a temporary expansion of national training numbers.

I am also concerned about the arrangements for selection of junior doctors into run-through surgical training programs. Surgery has unique requirements in terms of recruitment – the criteria for selection include diagnostic skills, clinical judgment and manual dexterity. It is neither practical, nor indeed safe, to select junior doctors with a view to a career in surgery without the opportunity for assessing whether they have the full mix of professional skills required.

It is with the greatest reluctance that I am dissociating myself and my College from any further involvement in the Review Group that you are chairing.”

There are some very good points made here, the full letter can also be read. These points apply not only to surgery, but to all the other medical specialties; MMC is inflexible and flawed as it selects far too early, before juniors know what they want to do and before they can prove that they are suited to a particular specialty.

If the DoH is railroading and not listening, then the only option remains unilateral withdrawal from proceedings. It's a shame that this wasn't realised sooner.

No comments: