I am sure many of you have seen the “Trauma & Orthopaedics ST3 National Recruitment 2016 Preference List” document released by Health Education England via the Oriel system on Friday 8th 2016. Specifically, in this document which outlines the number of posts available in each individual Local Education and Training Boards (LETBs), is written the following at the bottom:
“*PLEASE NOTE: We are sorry to inform you that this year there are NO vacancies in Health Education England – London. This decision has been made by Health Education England – London, with no involvement by the National Trauma and Orthopaedics Team, based at Health Education England Yorkshire & the Humber.
Please DO NOT contact Health Education England Yorkshire and the Humber with regards to this matter; we are unable to provide any further information.”
Since being made aware of this document we have asked all junior members who are affected by the decision for zero NTNs in London, to contact [email protected] Additionally, since then I have written to the following people to seek detailed clarification on the reasons behind this decision, as well as whom made the decision for an entire locality to have no posts for the 2016 round of recruitment in T&O:
David Large* Chair of the T&O SAC
Mike Kimmons* CEO of the BOA
Claire Marx President of the RCS Eng
Mark Bowditch* Training Programme Director (TPD) of the East of England LETB
Nigel Standfield Head of School of Surgery (London)
Wendy Reid Director of Education & Quality at Health Education England
David Wilkinson Postgraduate Dean for Health Education Yorkshire & Humber
Elizabeth Hughes* Director and Dean for Education and Quality (London and South East)
Julie Screaton Health Education England
Andrew Frankel Postgraduate Dean for Health Education South London
Julia Whiteman Postgraduate Dean for Health Education North West London
Sanjiv Ahluwalia Postgraduate Dean for Health Education North Central and East London
William Allum Chair of the JCST
Tim Swanwick Dean for Postgraduate Medical Education for Health Education North Central and East London
The people annotated with an asterix above have responded so far, however we have yet to receive a clear and detailed description of the reasons for this decision.
To summarise what is known about the process (and not the decision made), BOTA has 4 representatives (Mustafa Rashid, Simon Fleming, Marshall Sangster, and Nick Ferran) that sit on the Selection Design Group (SDG), which is chaired by Mr. David Large. This group designs each years’ round of interviews for National Recruitment in T&O at ST3 level. The lead region for T&O recruitment is Health Education Yorkshire & Humber (HEY&H), which is led by Mr. David Wilkinson as Postgraduate Dean.
Once the interview process, questions, mark schemes, other important materials, and infrastructure has been decided upon by the SDG, it is the responsibility of HEY&H to deliver this process. After each year of recruitment, the number of NTNs per LETB are released. This is coordinated by Health Education England, after a process that involves the local LETBs and HEE. The SDG, and HEY&H are not involved in determining the number of NTNs in each region, each year.
We are working very hard to ensure that we are representing you the best we can, including gathering a detailed rationale for this decision, which has impacted on so many individuals. Once I have an appropriate response to the questions we have put to the above people, we will release a statement. In the meantime, if you have not already contacted us at [email protected], then please get in touch and explain how this decision will affect your life and career.
With kind regards,
Mustafa Rashid
President of the British Orthopaedic Trainees Association