The mess that is the MMC has hit new lows, when the MTAS online application process was condemned by the interview panel for General Surgery in the West Midlands, who have declined to continue the interview process. The panel felt that "the shortlisting process failed to distinguish adequately between candidates, giving credibility to creative writing skills rather than hard evidence of competency".

The panel released the following joint statement, to much acclaim by the junior doctors who have experienced this unjust, non-validated selection process:

Statement from the ST3 Interview panel in General Surgery representing the West Midlands Deanery Panel.

Mr Rob Spychal – Consultant Upper GI /General Surgeon City Hosp Birmingham
Mr Andrew Garnham – Consultant Vascular /General Surgeon New Cross Hosp
Mr Arun Pherwani – Consultant Vascular Surgeon UHNS Stoke on Trent
Mr Stan Silverman- Consultant Vascular Surgeon City Hosp Birmingham
Mr Allan Corder – Consultant General Surgeon Hereford
Mr Amir Khan – Consultant General / Vascular Surgeon Walsall Manor
Miss Colette Marshall- Consultant Vascular Surgeon UHCW Coventry
Mr Chandra Cheruvu - Consultant Upper GI /General Surgeon UHNS
Mr Rajiv Vohra – Consultant Vascular Surgeon Univ Hosp Birmingham
Mr Alan Jewkes- Consultant General / Vascular Surgeon Good Hope
Dr Jeremy Owen – Consultant Occupational Health MOD
Miss Jeanette Mortimer – UHB Staffing Manager



The ST3 Interview Panel for General Surgery in the West Midlands have unanimously come to the conclusion that the MTAS procedure for recruitment to ST3 in General Surgery, has not been implemented according to agreed guidelines. We have therefore declined to continue with the interviews today.

We have come to this conclusion after considerable debate. We feel that this is the right course of action, which has at its heart the best interests of surgical trainees, training and our patients.

A serious procedural flaw, which came to light this morning, has been the complete lack of a longlisting process prior to selecting candidates for interview. This alone is sufficient grounds for postponement or cancellation and makes the entire recruitment process open to criticism and challenge.

Our meeting at 8.00 am today was the first available reasonable opportunity for the panel members to meet, discuss the process and air their concerns and reservations. With the limited information available today on-site, the longlisting process could not be completed satisfactorily. In addition we feel that the recruitment process for ST3 in its current format is in contradiction to equal opportunities legislation and NHS best practice guidelines.


We have in addition, wider concerns about the current MTAS process as follows,

As far as we are aware, the shortlisting application form has not been validated or demonstrated to be suitable for appointments to ST3 in General surgery which in effect is a pre-consultant appointment.

The application form domains available to the shortlisters and its accompanying scoring system have not been shown to select candidates best suited to be surgeons. It fails to distinguish adequately between candidates, giving credibility to creative writing skills rather than hard evidence of competency.

The time-scale imposed nationally has ensured that the whole process has been rushed. The unrealistic deadlines and sheer number of applications caused the MTAS computer system to crash. Changes in process have been implemented in order to meet deadlines. The marking system for shortlisting has been inconsistent throughout the country with forms being marked by a varying combination of members of the medical profession and lay people. There has been a lack of cross validation between markers and different marking methods (horizontal and vertical) have been used in different deaneries. Therefore there has been no standardisation or quality control.

The staff in the West Midlands deanery have worked tirelessly without adequate resources in place to try to meet the deadlines set. This has meant working holidays and weekends repeatedly entering marks onto an unreliable MTAS Website. They have finally provided a shortlist of candidates for ST3 in General surgery on the Friday evening prior to the Monday morning interviews. In all, the deanery has received 11500 applications, well in excess of the projected 8000.

We owe it to our patients and the profession that we are able to select and appoint the best candidates to surgical training posts and felt strongly that this was impossible today.

We have agreed to return to help re-shortlist and interview once the entire process has been proved to be reliable, robust, reproducible and has been validated and agreed upon nationally.

Above all we have carefully considered the plight of the candidates outside today, waiting to be interviewed. We have stayed and spoken to all the candidates about our decision with honesty, openness and integrity. We have been at pains to assure them of our best intentions towards trainees and surgical training as a whole. We share their concerns and the concerns of the hundreds of other young doctors who haven’t been shortlisted for any job. We share their anxieties at a system, which is being described and unjust and unfair. We have been overwhelmed by their positive responses to our action and are humbled by their words of support. We have provided support for all the candidates with the offer of contact email and telephone numbers if they require any further assistance.

As the Governments' attempt to dismantle the NHS in favour of ever increasing private sector initiatives gathers pace, it has been revealed by the Healthcare Commission that as many as one in five elective knee & hip replacements are bungled by ISTCs and have to be repaired by NHS centres according to The Times. The commission feels that these independent centres are breaking their contractual obligations by not reporting the exact outcomes of the procedures they perform.

These independent centres are privately run, with profits going directly to shareholders, yet they are publicly funded with tax payer money. These centres have only managed to fulfil 59% of their contracted procedures, £16m  paid to Capio (private provider) last year for a single Oxfordshire treatment centre that did not open on time.

At a time when Ms Hewitt has forced NHS trusts to cut staff & services, it is quite ridiculous that she & the Government can justify handing out money that would had gone to shore up ailing trusts, as these ISTCs only account for 10% of all elective procedures. Ms Hewitt should consider whether these private sector facilities are safe before giving them multi million pound contracts, as 11 out of 21 centres were found to fail at least some of the 32 minimum safety standards in inspections by the Healthcare Commission last year.

Botched Operations At Private Clinics