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March 02, 2007

Another Whitehall Fairy Story ....

The newspaper today is full of the major story - the plight of the Junior Doctors sold down the river by their own British Medical Association and the Senior Consultants who are in bed with the Whitehall W******s who have implimented the latest waste of taxpayers money. The Government has launched yet another "modernisation" on the Health Service. And you would be wrong if you thought it was about delivering a better medical service to patients and a reduction in the wasteful use of funds and acutely short space for waiting rooms and treatment rooms by sacking the infestation of bureacrats. No, this scheme is forcing all our junior doctors to apply for the jobs and specialities they have been studying for or already hold. One can only ask why the BMA even considered for one second supporting this scheme - or why some Consultants seem to have done very well out of supporting it according to the Doctors caught up in the farce. The whole is rapidly developing into yet another expensive and totally unnecessary change for changes sake scheme is imposed on professionals by the faceless and utterly incompetent Wonders of Whitehall.

The Junior Doctors caught up in this disaster are forced to complete an online application form - most of the questions having no direct relationship with anything medical - and then wait to hear if the bureaucrat at the other end has managed to read it; process it; and allocate the doctor to his or her own job. Whitehall doesn't seem to have considered that (a) most Junior Doctors have families and working partners, and (b) may have invested a considerable number of hours or years even in training for their present speciality. So, the faceless wonder processing the form decides the Doctor X is not required for their current post or speciality and either (a) informs them they are no longer required and are on notice, or (b) can continue in the health service but at a new hospital in some other part of the country. The lucky few who get to keep their jobs are also sometimes told they will have to change speciality.

It is nothing short of disgraceful that someone who has invested five years at university and another five years working as a House Doctor in one of our now increasingly disgracefully maintained and managed hospitals is now at the mercy from a career perspective of some jumped up filing clerk who has no university degree, no medical qualification and is simply processing a form designed by some equally unqualified and overpaid consultant. Morale among Doctors has collapsed completely. Understandably they feel betrayed by the BMA and equally understandably they feel bitter and betrayed by the Consultant Physicians and Surgeons who have managed to not only remain in post but have aided the incompetent civil servants in setting this up.

In the 19th Century the Civil Service was created to do away with the rotten "patronage" system. It has not succeeded. In fact it has simply replaced one rotten system with a new one - one that is even more rotten in that it pretends to be based on fairness and openess when it is neither. Pity the Junior Doctors, but I have to say they are simply the latest casualties in the New Labour (Old Socialist) programme of replacing every professional in management of every public service with incompetent civil servants who will do as they are told.

As for the BMA and the senior Medics supporting this process - well, meet the modern face of Judas Iscariot.

Posted by The Gray Monk at March 2, 2007 12:36 PM

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