MTAS online recruitment portal to be dropped

Recruitment to specialist training posts in England next year is set to be handled locally rather than nationally, with the national recruitment portal to be abandoned next year.

There were howls of protest from junior doctors earlier this year about the perceived shortcomings of the Medical Training Application System (MTAS) and failings of the national recruitment portal put in place to deliver it. By March the system was said to have descended into "pandemonium" with the portal unable to cope with traffic volumes and having serious security holes.

The BMA has today announced what it describes as a "pragmatic" new agreement on junior doctor recruitment for 2008 which will "not feature a central computer portal".

Instead "The system for 2008 will build on the best elements of paper-based, local processes used before the introduction of the centralised Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) this year," the BMA said today.

The approach is described as an "interim solution" while work continues to develop selection methods for 2009 and beyond.

The BMA said the agreement had reached by all parties at the government’s Modernising Medical Careers Programme Board which will remove limits on the number of applications junior doctors can submit, or interviews they can attend.

Ministerial will still need to be obtained for the new proposals, but the BMA says that competition "will be intense" and "that more work is needed to ensure that junior doctors are treated fairly beyond 2008".

The system for 2008 will build on the best elements of paper-based, local processes used before the introduction of the centralised Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) this year, and will not feature a central computer portal.

Mr Ram Moorthy, chairman of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee, says: “Much of what doctors wanted for 2008 has been achieved. They will be able to apply for as many jobs as they want, where they want. There will be no limits on the number of posts they can be interviewed for. The process will be run locally rather than nationally, with no centralised computer system, and no untried selection methods.

Dr Ian Wilson, deputy chairman of the BMA’s Consultants Committee, says: “This year, consultants worked incredibly hard to try and make a flawed system work. The interim solution agreed for 2008 builds on the best elements of previous local systems and was the one which posed the lowest risk of failure. If it is to work, sufficient time for robust shortlisting and interviewing must be built into consultants’ job plans. The challenge now is to start planning a fair and efficient system for the future.”

The Programme Board agreed that recruitment to academic training posts should be handled by a separate process in 2008.

Links 

DH acknowledge junior doctor selection ‘shortcomings’

Junior doctors’ confidential details openly displayed

DH orders review into junior doctor recruitment system

Junior doctors say training website is in ‘pandemonium’