DEMAND YOUR SCORE
Imperial College will be issuing all candidates with their scores as obliged to under the Data Protection Act 1998. They were perfectly happy to release the scores when they realised that MDAP was not going to.
NO APPEALS
MDAP have stated there will not be an appeals process - something which may be worth contesting
The Jobless...
Birmingham - about 50 final years without jobs (import jobs deanery!).
87 people (1 in 4) at UCL are unplaced (250 within all London deaneries)
Roughly 60 Unplaced Manchester Students
Higher than expected number of EU students who have secured jobs during this process.
posted by Medic at 1:56 PM
5 Comments:
There is a document on MMC website entitled 'Operational Framework for Foundation Year'
http://www.mmc.nhs.uk/download_files...-Framework.pdf
Contains 2 important details:
(1) That on of the Foundation Schools responsibilities is 'develops and manages an appeal system on issues of recruitment and assessment'
and that they have an administator to deal with appeals.
Clearly states this on page 19 in an easy to read and clear table.
(2) Transfers between Found Schs are allowed after appointment see page 23. So chance potentially exists to move.
This MMC document clearly states that appointments must be made fairly and that an appeal system must exist.
If individuals therefore are unhappy and wish to appeal they should contact the foundations school who turned them down and and tell them you wish to appeal, ask for the administator responsible for this, as laid out in the operational framework.
I can not see how they can refuse something that the MMC clearly states should exist and be provided.
Fifth Year Medical Students
The Medical School
The University of Birmingham
18 February 2006
Dear Professor Field,
We are writing to you as a collective year group of final year medical students studying at the University of Birmingham, to express our extreme dissatisfaction with the way in which the process of job application has been coordinated by the Multi-Deanery Appointment Process. There have been numerous problems with this system. We feel the system has been put together too rapidly without sufficient foresight and planning and without the necessary thought as to the stress that this system would place us under.
A vast number of students had problems initially with trying to submit applications, particularly as the deadline approached. It is inevitable that many of us will be forced to leave our submissions close to the deadline as we are trying to balance revision for exams, writing the personal statements, approaching referees, deciding which hospitals we wish to apply to, along with a heavy hospital timetable. We are accustomed to working to deadlines and planning our workload and, are of necessity, good at organisation. However, some factors eg waiting for a referees response are beyond our control. Additionally the wording on the MDAP shortlist page seemed to suggest that it was possible to change all details of our application form up until the deadline, as long as you did not click the ‘Apply for positions’ button to officially submit your application.
Collectively, we understood this rather ambiguous statement as stating that we would not be able to make any further amendments to our applications once submitted. Thus by pressing the button and submitting our applications any earlier than the deadline, we thought we would be making our final submission and registering our applications permanently with the system (with no further changes possible). However on final submission, it then became clear that in fact we would still have been able to make any amendments/changes to our applications at any time up until the deadline, contrary to our understanding from the information posted. We believe that the MDAP should have anticipated that despite advising us to get our submissions in early, there would inevitably be an increased demand close to the deadline and thus, a website designed to cope with these demands should have been available.
Secondly, we were all led to believe that the results of these applications would be available on the 31st January. Our medical school warned us on the 30th January that this was unlikely to be the case but it was left until the 31st before MDAP put a message on its website explaining that there had been delays and that results would not be available until the 8th February. The MDAP must have been aware earlier that it would be unable to meet its deadline and we feel it would have been more considerate to give us prior notice of this delay.
When the results were finally released on the 8th February a large number of users were unable to access this site until late in the evening or the next day which was frustrating for all involved. The heavy use of the website should have been anticipated, particularly in light of the numerous problems experienced with the earlier submissions process.
Having experienced all of this initial anxiety a large number of us were then greeted with the news that jobs have not been allocated to us in the first round of allocation and we must now go onto a second round of application. Several students were also told that they are not eligible for the second round of application because their personal statements fell within the bottom five percent of the applications scores and that they may have to undergo further clinical assessments, which we find completely insensitive. Naturally we are extremely upset and angry about this news, especially since we have been assured by the deanery (on numerous occasions) that the vast majority of applicants who complete the application form in full (i.e. fill all forty choices) are allocated one of their top ten choices.
It is not difficult to anticipate that there would be problems with the MDAP application process relying on twelve personal statements, each of which are allocated a maximum of four points amounting to a maximum total of forty eight points. With several hundred students applying through MDAP there will be numerous candidates who want the same job all scoring the same number of points. The system then appears to rely on random allocation of jobs, a process which seems extremely unfair given the fact that we have all put in five years of hard work to get to the position that we are now in.
Having now found ourselves in this position, what help will MDAP be giving us? The welcome information states that we will be sent an email within the next two weeks with full details of the process and that we will have to create a new shortlist of posts sometime early in March. Surely the MDAP must know which jobs are available now. There are apparently no guarantees that we will be given a placement within the deanery of our choice (i.e. Birmingham), even if we wish to remain in the area where we have been trained and have family and friends. Are there even any guarantees that we will get jobs at all and hence be able to complete our training?
We sincerely hope that you will take our comments on board so that next cohort fifth year students do not find themselves in the same position that we find ourselves in, particularly during what is a very important time in our training. We look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.
Yours faithfully
Fifth Year Medical Students
The University of Birmingham
There is a a good presentation on the Oxford pgmde website which was given in Jan 2006, this in the middle of it contains model answers for questions that were asked on the MDAP form and that will be used for FY2. Suggest you all down load a copy it is very useful, tell anyone doing FY1 or FY2 to do the same.
Link for presentation is:
www.oxford-pgmde.co.uk/mmc/Annetalk10jan06.ppt
The marking scheme for MDAP is on the MMC
http://www.mmc.nhs.uk/download/scoring-guidelines.pdf
This will be useful when you get your score.
In fact they should give you a photocopy of your scoring sheet with any comments when they release the scores
If they give you just the total score ask for a copy of the scoring sheet-after all they have to under the Data Protection Act and Freedom of Info Act.
Hope you find all this stuff useful.
Unfortunately Imperial College has gone back on its promise to issue our scores. This is on the advice of the London Deanery
You guys should not only be asking for you score BUT A FULL COPY OF THE SCORE SHEET.
MDAP are in clear contravention of Data Protection Act.
The MDAP are the holders of the data therefore they are liable for not refusing to release it.
The link to the Information commissioner is below tells you how to make a data protection complaint, and you can make a claim against MDAP for compensation this is what the website says on that issue:
'As an individual you may claim compensation from the data controller for damage or damage and distress caused by any contravention by the data controller under the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998. '
Web link for Information Commissers Office:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/eventual.aspx
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