Rinse & spin
So the DH have not yet responded to my request for clarification on Professor Heard’s resignation but a statement from the MMC team has been forthcoming, reproduced below as follows:
A Department of Health spokesperson said:
“We can confirm that Professor Shelley Heard, MMC National Clinical Advisor, has resigned her position with the MMC team.
“Shelley has made an outstanding contribution to MMC. We will miss her experience of medical education and her outstanding energy and commitment to the project.
Professor Heard said in a statement:
“We have worked for the last 3 years with many stakeholders to develop a strategic and operational approach to MMC in order to fulfil the high aspirations of Modernising Medical Careers. These principles of patient safety being at the forefront of all we do; trained doctors delivering most of front-line care; improved supervision and accountability to allow doctors in training to gain in their skills and confidence have been lost in the detail and acrimony of a recruitment process which should have supported and not driven it.”
In a letter to Sir Liam Donaldson, she added “I hope that the original vision of MMC will be achieved.”
Hmm, pardon me for being sceptical but it looks like the spinners got their hands on her first. Let us see if the original letter of resignation is forthcoming.
Lather, rinse & spin; repeat as many times as necessary.
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That letter of resignation is now available in full & is copied below. See how the carefully selected sentences released initially by the MMC / DoH PR team give a very different impression to the actual contents of the letter. I wonder what this says about the credibility of yesterday’s announcement from the Review Group, especially when it appears that the BMA were not aware of this resignation when they climbed on board. Or at-least so says Dr Jonathan Fielden, Chairman Central Consultants and Specialists Committee.
Professor Sir Liam Donaldson
Chief Medical Officer, DH
4 April 2007Dear Liam
With great regret I am writing to inform you of my resignation as National Clinical Advisor to MMC.
You will know that Alan Crockard and I have worked for the last 3 years with many stakeholders to develop a strategic and operational approach to MMC in order to fulfil the high aspirations of Modernising Medical Careers. I was involved in this work from the very outset, as a member of the SHO Technical Group supporting the development of Unfinished Business and I was delighted to have the further opportunity to work on the implementation of these critical changes to postgraduate medical education. They were and remain the right thing to do for the public, for doctors in training and for the profession.
But somehow we have lost our way. The high principles of MMC - patient safety being at the forefront of all we do; trained doctors delivering most of front-line care; improved supervision and accountability to allow doctors in training to gain in their skills and confidence – have been lost in the detail and acrimony of a recruitment process which should have supported and not driven it. We are losing the goodwill of a generation of UK graduates who believed it when we said we wanted to train more UK doctors better and we are losing the goodwill of patients and of senior colleagues.
I believe that we need to step back and reassess where we are going. The Review Group has not done this strategically or with an eye to the future. The situation can be retrieved and a new direction can be found to move transition forward, but the Review Group has become so immersed in the detail that it cannot see a way ahead which will be both equitable to doctors and support the aims of MMC. Some of the core principles which Alan and I had tried to hard to embed in taking MMC forward are now lost. I find myself able to support few of the decisions that the Review Group has taken since they undermine principles which are at the core of MMC.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity and privilege of making a contribution to postgraduate medical training. I hope that your original vision of MMC will be achieved.
Yours sincerely
Professor Shelley Heard
MMC National Clinical Advisorcc. Lord Hunt, Minister for Health
Mrs. Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Health
Dr Martin Marshall, DCMO
Mrs. Clare Chapman, Director General
Again, I am not about to dance on a grave but I can tell you where you lost your way. It was when you lost sight of the primary stated vision of improving training & started to make compromises in the name of expedience. It is as simple as that. The time to protest was when the decisions were being taken, not now when we have been left with the fallout.
April 6th, 2007 at 8:46 am
In a letter to Sir Liam Donaldson, she added “I hope that the original vision of MMC will be achieved.â€
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No she didn’t. What she actually wrote was “I hope that your original vision of MMC will be achieved.” Sir Liam’s spin doctors look to be trying to distance him from this. Now why would that be?
Who actually started this Unfinished Business and who is, therefore, ultimately responsible for the resulting MMC debacle?
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2002/08/15273/10142
April 6th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I agree entirely.
What should have been changes in the training system for the better have been turned into this travesty & it is no good for those at the top to pretend that this was not what they intended when so many of us could see what was coming a long way off. Sins of omission are as bad as those commissioned.
But then, the scum rises to the top anywhere.
April 6th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Alex Liakos (former medical student advisor to MMC) said in his resignation letter to Sir Liam:
“This is your project. …. Ultimate authority rests with you. It is now time for you to take responsibility. If you continue to force through these reforms, I want you to know that it is obvious - even from a medical student level - that you are a million miles away from being the ‘bridge between the profession and the government’ that you claim: you could not be acting more undemocratically if you tried.”
Sometimes it easier for those just starting out to point out that the emperor has no clothes.
April 6th, 2007 at 9:41 am
I agree again, especially considering that there has been no response at all from the CMO since this began, It is almost as if he has gone to ground & let the Colleges / Review Group take the flack for him.
But since when did you start to believe the fiction that democracy had anything to do with this?
Our masters tell us what to think & do with apathy taking care of the dissenters.