• Incompetent juniors get hospital jobs they can't do
• 80 top specialists attack new appointments system

  MORE than 80 of Britain’s most eminent doctors today condemn a medical recruitment system that is forcing them to employ substandard junior staff.

  In a letter to The Times, they say that their students are angry, demoralised and confused by the online system that has done away with interviews and fails to reward academic achievement.

  It comes as a survey, seen by The Times, shows that 60 junior doctors recruited under the scheme failed to meet minimum standards of medical competence. Three quarters were trained abroad and more than half could not speak English adequately. Four have already been dismissed while others have had to be retrained at great expense to cash-strapped trusts.

  This year the scheme has left more than 600 young medics, some with perfect academic records, without jobs when they graduate this summer. But 208 foreign-trained students, two thirds from the European Union, have been given posts.

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  The system, part of a new training regime called Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), uses a form of “computer dating” to match applicants to places, without interviews. Charles McCollum, Professor of Surgery at South Manchester University Hospital, who organised the letter, said that first-class students had been turned down for jobs while others who were far less suitable had been selected.

  In the first round of selection, he said, 60 out of 360 students at Manchester University had failed to get jobs, which are vital if they are to qualify fully as doctors.

  The reason, he and his cosignatories believe, is that selection is made on the basis of answers to an online form from MMC that puts as much weight on nebulous issues such as ability to work in a team, or leadership qualities, as it does on academic ability. “We are very concerned,” he said. “The Department of Health has been warned, but takes no notice.”

  The MMC system aims to provide a more complete, skill-based training than in the past, with a fairer system for allocating jobs. This is designed to make it easier for young doctors to get “foundation” jobs — their first two years — in places distant from the medical school where they qualified, and remove suspicions that many posts were given on the basis of “jobs for the boys”.

  But Professor McCollum says that in a profession based on empathy and communication, it is impossible to select students without an interview.

  Problems arose at Norfolk and Norwich Hospital and at James Paget Hospital in Great Yarmouth when a number of newly-appointed junior doctors were deemed to be unable to do their jobs. Two doctors were dismissed at Norfolk and Norwich and £100,000 had to be spent on retraining other recruits. A spokeman for the hospital said: “The doctors did not meet competencies.”

  The Department of Health said this was an isolated incident involving 30 doctors and that the trusts involved had been quick to act. The doctors were given further training and, in all but four cases, then proved competent.

  Many student medics have lost confidence in the system, which they say is ripe for abuse.

  “It’s all about how well you fill the form in,” said Robert Lord, from Blackburn, a student at Manchester University.

  “We were told people would get audited to see if what they said on the forms is true. But it hasn’t happened. People could have lied and there is no way it could have been checked.

  “Lots of people haven’t got the jobs they merited, and there should be some accountability. It’s a complete lottery.”

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