Sub-consultant posts 'dumbing down NHS'

Doctors are meeting today to discuss plans to create "sub-consultants" who would have less expertise and responsibility than traditional consultants.

They say the move will dumb down the NHS and make it harder for patients to see a genuine specialist.

About 20 of the jobs, called clinical fellow posts, are to be advertised in London hospitals within two months.

They are open to doctors who would normally be ready to become consultants, but in the new jobs would not take on all the responsibilities of a top doctor such as training staff and managinga department. Pay would be at least 25 per cent less than for consultants, who start on £60,944 a year.

Ram Moorthy, a surgeon at Great Ormond Street and chairman of the Junior Doctors Committee of the British Medical Association, said: "If these posts continue London's patients will be short changed. They will be sent to see someone who has not been appointed a consultant. Patients need to have confidence that the buck stops with the person they are seeing."

Speaking at today's BMA consultants' conference in Euston Dr Anne Thorpe of West Middlesex University Hospital proposed a motion against the posts. She warned of "an unfettered expansion of doctors stuck in a job with little prospect of progression".

She added: "It would signal an end to the brave and laudable intention of the NHS Plan that patients in our hospitals should, in the main, be cared for by consultants, who deliver the highest quality of care.

"And that this care extends beyond the care of individual patients to care of the NHS itself, since it is the consultant workforce that leads innovation and development for the benefit of all."

Mr Moorthy said qualified doctors could be forced into the new posts because of a lack of jobs. He added: "We are concerned that these are deadend posts which would be demoralising for doctors, who would not be using the skills they learned in training."

Dr Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the BMA's consultants committee, called on the Government to stop meddling. He added: "It is consultants' hard work, their leadership and innovation that delivers for the NHS. We know it, our patients know it, it's about time ministers acknowledged it too."