Traditionally, junior doctors have served a form of apprenticeship, selected and mentored by senior figures who have guided their careers. Suspicious of what it saw as an “old boy” network, the department has introduced a scheme that aims to select and distribute medical students to their first posts by an entirely different system.

Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), as the programme is called, has been organised by a small group led by Professor Alan Crockard, a neurosurgeon. He was not available yesterday to reply directly to the criticisms made by medical students and clinical academics, but MMC provided answers through a spokeswoman at the Department of Health.

Medical training involves a five-year course followed — in the new system — by two years of foundation training in hospitals. The selection of students for these two years, called F1 and F2, has caused the row.

To avoid charges of favouritism, selection has been centralised and doctors are matched to jobs by a computer.

The applicants fill in a form online. It is divided into six sections, with each requiring two answers of up to 75 words each. The sections cover achievements (academic and, separately, non-academic), the “New Doctor” guidelines, reasons for applying for a particular post, examples of teamwork in which the applicant has participated and examples of leadership experience.

This means that passing exams counts for only one sixth of the total possible score, and is valued equally with, say, how convincingly an applicant can argue that he or she matches the General Medical Council’s Principles of Good Medical Practice (the “New Doctor” section) or how persuasively he or she can pretend to leadership or teamwork qualities.

Critics say that the form is “a bullshitter’s charter”, with academic achievements such as A levels and undergraduate qualifications being valued too little and the ability to talk a good story being valued too much. No interviews will be conducted, nor will answers be checked.Once the points have been assessed by a panel including doctors, a computer is used to match applicants with jobs. The lower the score, the less likely an applicant is to get the job that he or she sought.

In the first round, this year, 6,035 doctors applied and all but 660 were placed in jobs. The others learnt of their fate by logging on to a website.

They can apply in a second round, which began yesterday. “We know that a little over 400 of these applied for the most popular jobs, and they will undoubtedly get jobs in the next round,” the MMC said.

The problem is, said Charles McCollum, Professor of Surgery at South Manchester University Hospital, that some of the least talented students were appointed to jobs, while some of the best were not.

“It’s driving us spare,” he said. “We have high-flyers who will make excellent surgeons who have been rated as failures by this process, despite being excellent students. They are desperate. Some have been told they will have to be assessed to see if they are even fit to be doctors, and there is nothing we can do to help them.”

His letter to The Times protesting against the system was circulated, and within days was signed by 84 clinical academics. Some students are considering suing MMC over a process they consider grossly unfair.

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