Hundreds of surgical trainees have been left adrift in the medical training system this year with little chance of ever progressing.
According to deanery statistics, no core trainees were shortlisted in general surgery at Yorkshire and the Humber Deanery, and none were appointed. At the Northern Deanery, none of the trainees in general surgery or trauma and orthopaedics surgery achieved a specialty trainee year 3 (ST3) post.
Just seven core trainees were given appointments in the Severn Deanery, whereas in the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Deanery only a handful were able to progress to an ST3 post, an investigation by the BMJ Careers reveals.
Recommendation for Medical Specialty Training 2011, a report published by the Centre for Workforce Intelligence in August, found that although many doctors in core training are unable to go beyond core trainee year 2 (CT2) level, surgery was the worst specialty affected, with less than 6% of posts leading to a certificate of completion of training.
Research presented by Alison Carr, dean adviser for Modernising Medical Careers England, to the Medical Programme Board this June showed that competition ratios ranged from 4.4 applicants a post to 14.9 applicants a post in different surgical specialties.
Dr Carr’s findings also showed that there was a bottleneck in the system for surgical trainees, some of whom have been waiting as long as 13 years for an ST3 post.
Commenting on the findings, Dr Shree Datta, chair of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, said: “These figures are an embarrassment. Poor practice is allowing these doctors to simply flounder after training. There’s a group of frustrated junior doctors who want to go into surgery and are more than competent, yet once they are onto the training ladder there are no guarantees of a surgical training post.”
She added that it costs the tax payer up to £250,000 to train a doctor.
Dr Richard Marks, head of policy at pressure group Remedy, said that since the implementation of Modernising Medical Careers far too many trainees are being put through the system with the intention of developing a cheap generation of doctors.
Read more at BMJ Careers.
Someone ones told me that MMC stands for Messing up the Medical Career, how true he/she was! Of course, there have been some advantages but this very bleak picture is shocking. What is going to happen to these doctors? They are not fully trained but are trained to some extent because they have done CT1 and CT2 posts! Are these half backed surgeons?
The whole thing is in a mess and I am not sure who is responsible for this mess and how are we going to get out of them. What a way to encourage bright students to join Medicine! I feel sorry for the people of this country and our profession.
When are we going to get medical workforce planning right in this country?
We have always had a pyramidal structure in surgery with lots of jobs at the bottom and few at the top. It has always been highly competitive. Is it not right that only the most talented, hardworking and gifted should be able to get to consultant level? The sad fact is that there are a lot of well meaning young doctors manning the junior surgical rotas having been sold the “surgical dream” when in truth the majority don’t have a hope. Getting onto a core training programme in surgery these days don’t mean s**t and they should realise that right from the start. Sorry to be blunt.