Patient care was damaged by the chaotic changeover of junior doctors at the beginning of the month, an opinion poll for The Times has shown.

A clear majority of hospital consultants who responded to the poll on doctors.net, the largest medical website, said that care had been somewhat worse or much worse as a result of the change.

Over Britain as a whole, 11 per cent said that patient care had been much worse, and 42 per cent somewhat worse, compared with previous years.

None thought care had been much improved, and only 4 per cent said that it had been somewhat improved. The rest, 43 per cent, thought that the change in doctors’ posts had had no effect on patient care.

There has always been a big change in doctors’ jobs at the beginning of August, as junior doctors move to take up new training posts. But the number was larger this year and the appointment system badly organised.

The computer system designed to allocate doctors to jobs under the Medical Training Application System failed, and had to be abandoned. Many good candidates were not given training posts, while others did not get the specialities they wanted to follow.

Before the changeover there were warnings from the British Medical Association and the junior doctors’ pressure group, Remedy UK, that care would suffer. The poll, completed last week, substantiates these claims although the Department of Health may reflect that it could have been a lot worse.

When asked whether the changeover had forced the cancellation of clinics or operating lists, only half, 49 per cent, of the consultants said no. Just over a fifth (21 per cent) said that there had been minor reductions in clinics and lists, while nationally 3 per cent said that three or more sessions had to be cancelled.

This compared unfavourably with last year, according to 46 per cent of consultants. Of those ten per cent said that there had been “a lot more disruption” and 36 per cent “a little more”. The majority (51 per cent) said that it had been the same as 2006.

The greatest problems were in the North East, the West Midlands, the East of England and Wales. In each of these areas 13 per cent of consultants (19 per cent in the east of England) reported that more than three clinics or operating lists had to be cancelled.

Consultants were not hugely impressed with the skills of the trainees they were given. When ask to rate their preparedness for clinical duties when compared with trainees at the same stage last year, about half the consultants thought they were about the same. A small minority, less than 10 per cent, thought they were “a little more prepared” or “a lot more prepared”.

A third of consultants thought that the foundation year 1 graduates (F1s — those coming immediately out of medical schools) were less wellprepared than those of the previous year. As for foundation year 2 graduates (F2s), 42 per cent of consultants took the same view, and half thought that specialist trainees were less well-prepared.

Tim Ringrose, medical director of doctors.net.uk, said that a poll carried out of 1,300 doctors before the changeover had shown them fearful of the impact on patient care. The outcome of the new poll, he said, showed it had not been quite as bad as doctors had feared. “The main reason for that was awareness, so that senior doctors took evasive action to cover what they expected to be problems,” he said.

“Some feel August is the worst possible time for a changeover, especially in emergency departments. A lot of people are away from home and out of contract with their GPs. So if they feel ill they turn up at A&E departments.

“The way forward is to stagger the changeover, with F1s and F2s changing at different times,” he said.

One of the consultants who said that there had been disruption to patient care added the comment: “A whole bunch of people who do not know the place all starting at once, many of whom we have little knowledge of their experience: we are running a potentially insecure system.”

Several said that the junior doctors who had been appointed to their trusts had low morale, or were being pushed into roles for which they were not adequately trained. “Some junior doctors were told about their placement only one day before their job,” one consultant commented. “They were all very stressed.”

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: “Junior doctors made the best of a dire situation but the odds were against them because of the shambles the Government made of the application process.”

Matt Jamieson-Evans, of Remedy UK, said: “The learning point for the DoH is to start listening to the warnings of those who have to implement their baffling reform agenda. Proper medical training must not be strangled. Patients’ lives depend on it.”

The total of 180 consultants polled by doctors.net were chosen to be representative of the NHS, both by region and by medical speciality.

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