The Daily Rhino
Friday, February 01, 2008
The bastard son of MTAS
Originally published in the February issue of Medical Student Newspaper.
GOOD morning my friend! A warm good morning to you all. I love you, faithful readers, I love you with all my heart. But sadly I wish to commit heinous murder upon you at this present juncture in time, and indeed upon anyone that gits in mah way cos I is mad.
What, you might ask, has made such a normally cheery (I can be cheery) soul like me so irate? Did that A&E job finally make me crack? On the contrary, I finished it since I last saw you and have moved onto renal and transplant medicine. Wonderful wonderful.
Was it a bothersome patient what yanked my crank? No, I have been tolerating humans quite well recently. Is it the fact that my girlfriend’s Mum is staying with her for a month? Yes you’re quite astute, that’s probably not helping BUT it ain’t the root cause.
You’ve guessed it – job applications. I have brought you MMC news from the coalface over these last sixteen months, but at no point have I ever felt so low. Sure I’ll be cracking jokes in this piece, but secretly (and by writing this here, not secretly) I want to end my life. And I haven’t forgotten about murdering you either.
So what’s the dilly-yo? In a nutshell, for those shitbricks that haven’t been paying attention for twelve months, in 2007 the government unleashed its full wrath upon those lazy doctors and made tens of thousands jobless. 28,000 doctors applied for 15,500 jobs.
They did this by installing a woeful new application system, reducing the number of training posts despite record numbers of new graduates and not accounting for the many overseas doctors that work here but inviting a lot more in.
Thousands of junior doctors, many of whom are my friends, left the country. No one outside the rank of SHO seems that annoyed, so please do tell non-medics why they should be. Each of these doctors cost a quarter of a million pounds of taxpayers’ money to train. We, as a nation, have just let hundreds of millions walk out of the door. Australia, New Zealand and Canada’s gain is our huge loss.
I never thought I was the ‘leaving kind’. I love London and want to stay. That could be my downfall.
This year, it is worse. We were reassured but I think we all knew this to be false. However, last year we were provided with some ammunition. The Tooke Report, detailed in previous issues of this newspaper, made two key assertions. First, that government involvement with the training of junior doctors must stop. This has not transpired. Secondly, that the European Working Time Directive (which I recall being my first cover story as editor in 2004) is detrimental to junior doctors’ training by preventing sufficient hours learning on the job.
Reasons things will be worse this year include: many of the jobless SHOs from last year will be competing with this year’s glut for the same finite amount of jobs (in fact less, as much of the run-through allocation is filled). A recent ruling means that British-trained doctors are given no preference to overseas doctors when allocating jobs.
Overall, an estimated 22,000 applicants will compete for 9,000 jobs. Friends in other professional disciplines often seem confused as to why this is a problem. “Competition is healthy” they say, echoing what the government has been trying to dupe patients with. The key point is that in the UK, doctors can only train in the NHS, there is no alternative as there would be in a bank or law firm.
Continuing on from this analogy, consider my story, which I fear will be typical.
Today I received an email from Oxford Deanery, telling me I have been invited for interview in six days. I have heard, from an unsubstantiated source, that about five hundred applications for Core Medical Training were received by Oxford. They have 27 jobs to give away. So I am delighted I have been granted an interview.
But I have applied to both London and Kent, Surrey and Sussex because I, like a vast swathe of my colleagues, have been scared shitless by what happened last year. I have tried not to hedge my bets and end up jobless.
Let’s imagine I do well in the interview (you need a fertile imagination) and am offered a post. At this point I know none of the following: which hospital(s) I will be working in, my pay, my rota nor what firms I will be doing. Yet I have 48 hours and nor more to accept. If I don’t reply, I am assumed to have rejected the offer.
If I accept, I have to withdraw from all other Deaneries. The only problem is, London make their offers two and a half months after Oxford. So if I decide I want to wait it our for London – and then get offered nothing, I will have thrown away a job. Or if I hold out for London and get given a job I don’t want, I would rather have stayed with Oxford.
Taking our comparison back to banking or law, which companies do you know that would make a job offer with no details about the job whatsoever? Which industries can you think of where the boss doesn’t choose his own staff? And although some jobs make you move around the country, which gives a few weeks’ notice as to location, forcing the employee to sell, buy and move houses in a month?
Lastly, see if you know any banks or consultancies that would send this message to its employees. My ultimate boss, the government, sent all junior doctors a letter in January. It essentially said “don’t apply for anything competitive, you probably won’t get it. Don’t turn down any job applications, you will be lucky to even get one. Don’t be upset if you end up doing something you didn’t apply for, you should be thankful you’re employed.”
It amounted to: Aim Low. No fucking way any City firm says that to its employees. We’re being grown as a generation of ‘just passable’ docs. MMC engenders a culture of striving for mediocrity.
As I said before, I love London with all my heart. I want to make my life here. But in the last few weeks I have done some deep thinking. I had a hot bath recently – where I do my best thinking – and asked myself one question, “do I want to be a doctor?” I had toyed with the idea of leaving. Friends enquired at banks and they want to start me on £80-100,000p.a. But I realised I like being a doctor. It’s what I’m best at and I want to do it. This was a relief as I had started to have doubts.
The second question I asked myself was, “do I want to be a doctor in the UK?” I now know that without drastic change of far more than just the subject of this article – nurse quacktitioners, paltry consultant opportunities and the media’s attitude to us – I cannot stay here. The system has broken me.
Originally published in the February issue of Medical Student Newspaper.
GOOD morning my friend! A warm good morning to you all. I love you, faithful readers, I love you with all my heart. But sadly I wish to commit heinous murder upon you at this present juncture in time, and indeed upon anyone that gits in mah way cos I is mad.
What, you might ask, has made such a normally cheery (I can be cheery) soul like me so irate? Did that A&E job finally make me crack? On the contrary, I finished it since I last saw you and have moved onto renal and transplant medicine. Wonderful wonderful.
Was it a bothersome patient what yanked my crank? No, I have been tolerating humans quite well recently. Is it the fact that my girlfriend’s Mum is staying with her for a month? Yes you’re quite astute, that’s probably not helping BUT it ain’t the root cause.
You’ve guessed it – job applications. I have brought you MMC news from the coalface over these last sixteen months, but at no point have I ever felt so low. Sure I’ll be cracking jokes in this piece, but secretly (and by writing this here, not secretly) I want to end my life. And I haven’t forgotten about murdering you either.
So what’s the dilly-yo? In a nutshell, for those shitbricks that haven’t been paying attention for twelve months, in 2007 the government unleashed its full wrath upon those lazy doctors and made tens of thousands jobless. 28,000 doctors applied for 15,500 jobs.
They did this by installing a woeful new application system, reducing the number of training posts despite record numbers of new graduates and not accounting for the many overseas doctors that work here but inviting a lot more in.
Thousands of junior doctors, many of whom are my friends, left the country. No one outside the rank of SHO seems that annoyed, so please do tell non-medics why they should be. Each of these doctors cost a quarter of a million pounds of taxpayers’ money to train. We, as a nation, have just let hundreds of millions walk out of the door. Australia, New Zealand and Canada’s gain is our huge loss.
I never thought I was the ‘leaving kind’. I love London and want to stay. That could be my downfall.
This year, it is worse. We were reassured but I think we all knew this to be false. However, last year we were provided with some ammunition. The Tooke Report, detailed in previous issues of this newspaper, made two key assertions. First, that government involvement with the training of junior doctors must stop. This has not transpired. Secondly, that the European Working Time Directive (which I recall being my first cover story as editor in 2004) is detrimental to junior doctors’ training by preventing sufficient hours learning on the job.
Reasons things will be worse this year include: many of the jobless SHOs from last year will be competing with this year’s glut for the same finite amount of jobs (in fact less, as much of the run-through allocation is filled). A recent ruling means that British-trained doctors are given no preference to overseas doctors when allocating jobs.
Overall, an estimated 22,000 applicants will compete for 9,000 jobs. Friends in other professional disciplines often seem confused as to why this is a problem. “Competition is healthy” they say, echoing what the government has been trying to dupe patients with. The key point is that in the UK, doctors can only train in the NHS, there is no alternative as there would be in a bank or law firm.
Continuing on from this analogy, consider my story, which I fear will be typical.
Today I received an email from Oxford Deanery, telling me I have been invited for interview in six days. I have heard, from an unsubstantiated source, that about five hundred applications for Core Medical Training were received by Oxford. They have 27 jobs to give away. So I am delighted I have been granted an interview.
But I have applied to both London and Kent, Surrey and Sussex because I, like a vast swathe of my colleagues, have been scared shitless by what happened last year. I have tried not to hedge my bets and end up jobless.
Let’s imagine I do well in the interview (you need a fertile imagination) and am offered a post. At this point I know none of the following: which hospital(s) I will be working in, my pay, my rota nor what firms I will be doing. Yet I have 48 hours and nor more to accept. If I don’t reply, I am assumed to have rejected the offer.
If I accept, I have to withdraw from all other Deaneries. The only problem is, London make their offers two and a half months after Oxford. So if I decide I want to wait it our for London – and then get offered nothing, I will have thrown away a job. Or if I hold out for London and get given a job I don’t want, I would rather have stayed with Oxford.
Taking our comparison back to banking or law, which companies do you know that would make a job offer with no details about the job whatsoever? Which industries can you think of where the boss doesn’t choose his own staff? And although some jobs make you move around the country, which gives a few weeks’ notice as to location, forcing the employee to sell, buy and move houses in a month?
Lastly, see if you know any banks or consultancies that would send this message to its employees. My ultimate boss, the government, sent all junior doctors a letter in January. It essentially said “don’t apply for anything competitive, you probably won’t get it. Don’t turn down any job applications, you will be lucky to even get one. Don’t be upset if you end up doing something you didn’t apply for, you should be thankful you’re employed.”
It amounted to: Aim Low. No fucking way any City firm says that to its employees. We’re being grown as a generation of ‘just passable’ docs. MMC engenders a culture of striving for mediocrity.
As I said before, I love London with all my heart. I want to make my life here. But in the last few weeks I have done some deep thinking. I had a hot bath recently – where I do my best thinking – and asked myself one question, “do I want to be a doctor?” I had toyed with the idea of leaving. Friends enquired at banks and they want to start me on £80-100,000p.a. But I realised I like being a doctor. It’s what I’m best at and I want to do it. This was a relief as I had started to have doubts.
The second question I asked myself was, “do I want to be a doctor in the UK?” I now know that without drastic change of far more than just the subject of this article – nurse quacktitioners, paltry consultant opportunities and the media’s attitude to us – I cannot stay here. The system has broken me.
Labels: junior doctors, MTAS, NHS, Rohinplasty articles
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