| RemedyUK Reclaiming Our Profession |
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| Saturday, 19 January 2008 | |
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Introduction
MMC has proved to be the greatest single assault on our profession and our professionalism in the 400-year history of medicine in Britain. In addition, there are currently 70% more medical students than there were five years ago, but only a minimal increase in jobs for them. Junior doctors, already traumatised by MMC/MTAS 2007, are beginning a recruitment round in which competition will be worse than ever, with some specialties in some regions likely to be offering no ST3 posts at all. The process for selecting people into run-through for subspecialty training is in disarray. And 12,000 juniors face career termination. Specialist Registrars have their own ‘bulge’ to look forward to in 2011 to 2013 because of a shortage of consultant posts. Consultants have lost the ability to set clinical priorities for their patients and personal input into the recruitment of their teams. Ministers, managers and administrators have muscled in on the doctor-patient relationship. And the professionalism of every doctor – our autonomy, our capacity for patient advocacy and to make decisions based on clinical priorities – is being steadily eroded. It’s time to reclaim our profession. RemedyUK calls for and continues to fight for:- 1. An immediate commitment from the government to implement the Tooke Report in full. 2. A universally respected Doctor to be appointed to oversee the implementation of the Tooke Report and the work of the MMC Programme Board during the current emergency transition period. . 3. Accountability of the NHS:MEE to the profession to be guaranteed by election. 4. Urgent measures that recognise the pressing need for extensive additional training posts to ensure that the new 'lost tribe' of our most experienced junior doctors are not debarred from becoming the consultants of the future, and that the excellence of care that patients currently experience can be assured. 5. The architects of MMC to accept its failure and demit from the office to which they were appointed. 6. The establishment of a truly independent commission into workforce planning to analyse the current and predicted training numbers for the long term and the number of medical school places. 7. Ministers to seek an immediate derogation of EWTD implementation for doctors in training - recognising the deleterious effects on training and patient care that have resulted from the reduction in working hours: and work to begin on a long-term solution which balances safe working practice with adequate clinical exposure. 8. An immediate return of responsibility for quality of posts to the medical Royal Colleges. 9. The ring fencing of study leave budgets. 10. A recognition of the doctor as a professional whose primary goal is to serve the patient. |