Friday 11 May 2007

MTAS abuse of candidates


Another shocking tale of incompetence and gut-wrenching cruelty thanks to MTAS has come to light. I have obtained copies of emails that show quite clearly that some candidates had their hopes raised by being told that they had successfully got jobs, only for this to be retracted in a later email and the candidates told they had no jobs at all. This is the first email of congratulation:

"Dear Dr ......

Congratulations, please find attached letters. We look forward to hearing from you by 15th May 2007.

Regards"

A couple of emails later:

"Dear Doctor

You will this morning have received an email from my colleague, ***** *****. Unfortunately ***** was only attempting a draft email (you will see that it was not signed by myself or any other in the recruitment team) when the system automatically sent this to everyone on the complete list - not just those that were successful. This is purely an administrative error, for which we send our most sincere apologies.

Please see below text which you can expect to receive from the National office this afternoon. We are sending this to you in advance due to the administrative error that occurred this morning.

Dear GP Applicant,

I am writing on behalf of the Wessex deanery to confirm the result of your GP application.

The selection panel felt that you are suitable to be appointed to a GP training programme but unfortunately you did not score highly enough to be made an offer at this time. You are, essentially, on a “reserve” list and we will re-consider your application if any posts at the Wessex deanery are declined. In addition, we may also be able to consider your application at any of the other deaneries you originally applied to if suitable vacancies remain unfilled at those deaneries. If GP training programmes are still available, we will conduct a national clearing system and will contact you again if that is the case.

In the meantime could I ask you please NOT to contact either the NRO or the deanery at this very busy time. The Wessex deanery will be not be able to give you feedback on your performance at selection centre until after the current recruitment episode and you will be informed of the process to obtain this in due course.

Yours sincerely"

Unbelievable. MTAS is working so well for the GP application process. It is bad enough that there are going to be hundreds of excellent juniors left jobless after this unfair farce, but for them to be treated so barbarically is quite deplorable.
Its gets worse. It turns out all candidates who put GP as their 2nd to 4th choice, irrespective of their brilliance at the interview and selection centres, have not been offered jobs as yet and have been put on the reserve list. The scandal of this is that no posts are being held back for the reserve list.
This means that less able candidates are being handed out GP posts because they ranked GP as their first choice, while more able candidates have no chance of getting a GP job if they did not rank GP as their first choice. Can this be legal? I find it hard to believe it can be, especially when candidates were told beforehand that those offering jobs would not be able to know how a candidate had ranked their preferences; hence it should not have been possible to selectively hand out posts to only those who ranked GP as their first choice.
I fear this will not be the last tale of rank incompetence and unfairness thanks the cruel joke of MTAS.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, I found your blog c/o Hospital Phoenix. I am a physician in the US (a "foreign medical grad", which means I went to med school elsewhere). I have been trying to follow this whole mess, and I really feel for you guys.
Because of the generally nepotistic and corrupt medical system in my home country, I left for training and career advancement in the US and have been much happier. You can warn your countrymen that if they persist in this system, they will find a similar "brain drain" in their future.
Question: Has someone initiated a lawsuit to try and stop the insanity? I'm sure if this were to happen in the US, there would be a ton of lawsuits going on. Or are Brits not litigious by nature? I wish you good luck and I hope you guys find a way to resolve all this.

Garth Marenghi said...

yep, the brain drain is already in full motion I feel, such a waste of talent.

remedy uk are in the high court next week to take on the system, it will be interesting to say the least, come on remedy!

Phoenix said...

In view of how much you love la Toynbee, I thought of you when I saw this:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/data/334/7600/DC1/1

Garth Marenghi said...

my god, utter twaddle from toynbee again, I will be looking at this BMJ piece, scandalous.

Anonymous said...

It seems that people do learn from history, after all. Many years ago, I heard from someone who had been a clerk in the Army during the days of compulsory National Service. Apparently (yes I am too young to have been included!) the new conscripts had a form to complete before they joined up. Amongst other things it asked for six preferences as to trade to be allocated to.

The Army bureaucracy either had no means to put people into their first choice occupations, or had no will to. Because instead, they had a system called "trade of the week". Anyone who had put this week's trade in any position on their application form got that trade!

During the political recess, while the politicos fight over who will next be king, perhaps a "compare and contrast" exam question could be set for the senior types at the DoH. Just to keep them out of mischief, you understand!

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