We do need government, there really are things that cannot be done collectively and voluntarily. Things that require the compulsion that government can bring to bear.
Changes to medical training introduced since 2002 have been rushed, poorly led and implemented and are unlikely even to produce very good doctors, according to a new report.
Sir John Tooke, who chaired an independent inquiry set up by the Department of Health, said it had been a sorry episode from which nobody emerged with credit.
The new policy, called Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), was introduced without clear definition of what it was meant to achieve. Weak development, implementation and governance had made it worse. “Put simply, ‘good enough’ is not good enough,” Sir John writes. “Rather, in the interest of the health and wealth of the nation, we should aspire to excellence.”
Problems with MMC first became apparent when the computer-based application system used for selecting doctors for higher training failed this year. The Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) had to be abandoned, and the furore about it drew attention to wider defects. The report by Sir John, who is Dean of the Peninsula College of Medicine, will make uncomfortable reading for the department, and for Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, who was the main driving force behind MMC.
Aren\’t we lucky that the people who do this governing for us are both able to see when they are needed and then are so efficient in execution?