"Don't do it!" Doctors advise

Well its been a busy week. Remedy are orchestrating their mass lobby of Parliament, consultant numbers have been growing for the move against MMC (yes, people are still over-MTAS focussed, but its a start) and the BMA have begun to send out nomination forms for next year's committees. Political winds are moving - all we can hope is that something starts to give.

For this week it has been revealed that over half of all doctors report morale at work to be "poor" or "terrible". Even more concerning is that 69% would no longer recommend a career in medicine. One group of 6th formers were told this week to "absolutely not" go into medicine. And its hardly suprising - reduced training hours, becoming a consultant far less likely, professional identity disappearing into the abyss, and 8000 too few training posts.

The real problem is the unbelievable apathy with which this is being met, particularly by students. Whilst not worrying would be nice, the reality is that the "oh, it'll never happen" really is. Only last week a prospective medical student told me "It's fine, I'll just make sure I kiss plenty of arses!"... That's fine, but all it will get you now is a mouth full of shit! MTAS has removed all influence of local connections, replaced by a faceless 'panel'.

It suprises me how people who claim to be so keen on a career in medicine just don't seem to have the sense or motivation to research this sort of stuff. Sure, information can be hard to come by. It took until this week for the BBC to discover that "Doctors providing out-of-hours care are being replaced with less qualified staff such as nurses". No shit? Only about 2 years behind! But surely if you were that keen to give up 5 years of your life to train, you'd also be keen to find out exactly what you're letting yourself in for? It's hardly Holby City out there, is it.

It is fairly clear that the longer we all sit on our laurels waiting for it all to blow over, the more at risk we are. Get in the know and then get doing something about it!

(Remedy lobby Parliament, 24th April - see remedyuk.org for details!)