MTAS Madness

The bandwagon of self-pity surrounding the MTAS fiasco rumbles ever onwards, with news today that one in five junior doctors questioned in a survey has experienced suicidal thoughts in connection with the shambolic recruitment scheme.

Now don't get me wrong here, I think the whole MTAS cock-up is as appalling as the next man, and should be a resigning matter for Patricia Hewitt, at least. But the findings of this survey from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, authored, in part, by Professor Dinesh Bhugra, Dean of the College, are at least as disturbing as their alleged cause.

If these findings are to be believed, of the 600 junior docs questioned so far, one in five has considered suicide, 94% are more stressed than normal, one third say they have made more mistakes at work than normal, two fifths say they care less about patient care, a third admitted to drinking more than normal and a quarter have taken more sick leave than normal.

Let's summarise that: we have a whole bunch of pissed up, pissed off junior doctors, who are making mistakes, pulling sickies, don't care about the impact on patients and wouldn't mind topping themselves. And the majority of these apathetic whingers attribute the cause to the hassles of the recruitment process.

Well, I've got news for you, boys and girls - welcome to the real world. Life is a stressful business, doctoring even more so. Nobody forced you into your so-called caring profession, you chose it yourselves. And while I agree that those in charge of the health service, by and large, couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery (you'd know all about that, eh?), this is hardly breaking news.

Far from it, in fact. The distressing state of the health service, and the unfortunate working conditions imposed on junior doctors, has been making headlines for at least the last decade - long before any of you were even taking your A' Levels, let alone getting into medical school. Did you do any research into your prospective careers, at all? Did you wonder whether the working conditions might be a bit crap? Or were you so smitten with the idea of being a doctor that you leapt in with both feet, only to find the water was a bit deeper, and a lot murkier than you'd bargained for?

Face it, guys, doctoring is a bloody stressful job, and not just for the immediately obvious reasons. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and let those juniors who can handle it fill the dismally meagre number of available posts.

As for those junior doctors who have produced the findings reported in the Royal College survey, I hope for your sakes that the survey was conducted anonymously, because that sort of behaviour sounds very much like the stuff referrals to the General Medical Council are made of.

The Council, as many people will know, is barely able to find its way out of a paper bag unaided, and, while being totally unable to handle concerns of a genuinely serious nature, is only too willing to make up for this incompetence by relentlessly pursuing the more easily understood complaints, regardless of their veracity. I should think drunken behaviour, failure to turn up for work and disregard for patient care would fall easily within their definitions of misconduct, and stress leading to suicidal thoughts might well interest their health assessors.

So, in the absence of any meaningful action from the Department of Health, here's my suggestion on how to alleviate the whole recruitment crisis:

Those of you who can't cut it, resign. Those who won't resign should be shipped off to the GMC and struck off for being a disgrace to the medical profession. The rest of you, with whom, believe it or not, I sympathise greatly, will then have a far better chance of finding one of those dodo-droppings-like jobs, and the public will have a fair chance of getting reasonable medical care from a junior doctor who isn't drunk, apathetic and suicidal.

Billy Seggars