More than 4,000 junior doctor training posts remain unfilled just weeks before the jobs start on 1 August, a leaked government document has revealed.
The pressure group Remedy UK – a 9,000-strong group of doctors who have lost confidence in the implementation of training reform and the employment strategy in the NHS – claims to have seen a letter from the Department of Health conceding that only 30% of the roles were filled in some areas.
A Remedy UK spokesman said: “The situation is even worse than we thought when we started flagging up the problem of the August handover months ago.
“We now find ourselves in the Kafkaesque situation of having thousands of excellent doctors with no job for August and thousands of empty posts. It’s difficult to see how this won’t [have an] impact on patients.”
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The government has received a torrent of criticism over its handling of the new recruitment scheme for junior doctors.
There have been calls for a public enquiry and for health secretary Patricia Hewitt to resign.
