Junior doctors' conferences are always fun, delegates being devoid of the pomposity or stand offishness of the annual BMA meetings featuring their seniors, consultants and GPs, usually held a bit later in the year, late May.
At the Marriott Hotel in Swiss Cottage, I asked the press officer, Steve Harman, what would be the main event of the day, and he said it would be the call for the resignation of Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary. In the event, the big issue of the day was the call for the resignation of the people at the top table. sitting in front of the conference and chairing it: Junior doctors' ruling committee. "A mutiny", some called it.
The JDC - headed by Jo Hilborne, an unaturally youthful, round-in-all-the right places obstetrician in her early forties - was accused of not standing up for the junior doctors interests. A series of catastrophes has befallen these prespecialisation doctors in their mid to late twenties, that much was made clear.
The application procedure for specialist training posts - the next upward career step - had been streamlined: no longer CVs and interviews, rather a standard form that had to be filled in, online. So what you might think, many organisations do that, but many juniors, the mood of the room, the quotations in BMA news, etc, felt extracurricular activities that showed their aptitude were streamlined out of the procedure., and that many deserving candidates had not even had interview offers on the basis of the blunt new application instrument.
Then there was critique that Hilborne and co had not done enough to protect junior doctors from the vicissitudes of the government's reorganisation of juniors' career progress structure. (Modernising Medical Careers, shortened to MMC) One of the aspects of modernising medical careers led to the effective release of two cohorts of junior doctors on to the market at the same time, this year, 2007, as the three year foundation programme was shortened to two years in 2005. Thirty thousand doctors will be chasing 19,000 posts. Many it seems will have to change profession, or emigrate.
Many in the media will have little sympathy that young doctors are no longer guaranteed jobs - it's life for most of us. On the other hand, there is the fact that they have trained at the taxpayers expense for five, six, seven years. One young surgeon speaker pointed out that a surgeon puts ion far more hours in training than an astronaut or a passenger jet pilot. So is that there where all the increased NHS funds are being spent, apart from feathering the nests of GPs, whose pay awards have leapt by 30% or so in the last two years?
Creating the world's best medically trained cadre of buskers and shelf stackers? One beneficiary was - well the health service of the state of Queensland had a stand outside; two wolfish looking young men in red kit refused to answer questions from this journalist. But they admitted they were recruiting.
In the end, Hilborne and co won the no confidence vote, perhaps because of a passionate intervention from Dr Johnson, the head of the BMA, a mandarin, quizzical looking man in his fifties who, like nearly all other speakers, failed to offer bullet point rationale. The level of debate was "Support them because they have protected your interests" without saying how those interests had been protected; the opposing side was equally feeble in argument. The chair of the conference, n associate of Hilborne's, would doubtless deny that the fact that the voting preferences of each delegate in favour or against Gilborne was recorded swayed the vote either way. When whether the vote should be confidential or recorded was decided on in early stages by 20 people standing up to register the former preference, several complained that they hadn't realised what they were standing for.
In the end there was the usual raucous dinner. In the day, a charity that represented alcoholic doctors hosted a stand in the corridor that saw few visitors, and young medics are known for their drinking habits. Two years ago your correspondent danced closely with Ms Hilborne, then chairwoman elect. and was allowed to play his hand up her back as they dined side by side. This time, no such luck. Perhaps she had other things to think about.
