1,500 junior doctors forced to reapply for their jobs
Hospital placements in chaos after human error means entire recruitment process has to start over
THE recruitment of junior doctors has been thrown into chaos after hundreds were told to reapply for jobs they had been due to start in only a few months.
Hospital positions for medics in their third year of specialist training were withdrawn after a major blunder was discovered in the recruitment process.
The process will have to be run all over again, leaving as many as 1,500 junior doctors unsure about where they will be this August, when they were due to start their new positions.
Many have already arranged accommodation, putting deposits on flats and giving notice to existing landlords.
It comes after as many as 450,000 women were denied breast cancer screening checks following an error in the system that almost a decade.
The latest NHS fiasco emerged on Friday evening, the day after the Royal College of Physicians discovered an error in its recruitment process for junior doctors, who work in hospital under the supervision of more senior medics.
Some of the scores of candidates had been wrongly ranked and thus received potentially incorrect job offers.
The RCP said that the mistake was the result of human error. It hopes to rerun the recruitment process by Aug went unnoticed for 1, with junior doctors taking up their positions in time to avoid delays for patients.
The blunder has led to widespread anger among junior doctors.
One said: “I’ve already booked a holiday, arranged to visit my family, informed my landlord of expected moving dates, and my partner has applied for a job based on the previous offer. Thanks a lot.”
The BMA Junior Doctors Committee described the situation as “completely unacceptable”. Its chairman, Dr Jeeves Wijesuriya, said: “Unfortunately, events like this are emblematic of the way in which systems fail to value the lives of junior doctors.”
Dr Wijesuriya said the BMA was seeking “urgent clarity” on the steps being taken to support the trainees and whether there would be compensation.
Nigel Fleming, an orthopaedic registrar at Barts Hospital in London, wrote on Twitter: “When people ask why don’t junior doctors feel valued or respected, things like this spring to mind. Houses have been bought. Holidays
Portraits of the artist
booked. Lives planned. And an email on a Friday evening before a long weekend. Nice.”
The Royal College of Physicians said it hoped new job offers would be issued by May 14.
It said: “The RCP is extremely sorry for this situation and is taking full and immediate responsibility for addressing the issue to ensure the process is fair. We realise that this will be a worrying time for candidates.”