Medical Training Application Service - Overview of The System Prior To MMC

Overview of The System Prior To MMC

Prior to the introduction of Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), junior doctors who had completed their initial training after medical school (formerly the Pre-registration house officer or PRHO grade) could apply for posts as a Senior House Officer (SHO). They could apply for as many posts as they wished, and would be selected by their future employers based on their CV / application form and interview. They could devise their own training programme or apply to be part of a training rotation – usually entailing changing jobs every six months, but staying within the same speciality and hospital. Whilst training, an SHO would be encouraged to take professional exams to enable them to become a member of one of the medical royal colleges. Once this was achieved, they could apply for jobs as a specialist registrar. The lack of formal structure between the PRHO grade and the specialist registrar grade led to SHOs being labelled as a "lost tribe". During the MTAS crisis, however, "The Lost Tribe" was used to refer to doctors who were not able to proceed using the new computer system and as a result were left with no career at all, and so in a worse situation that the original "Lost Tribe" the system had been intended to help.