The recent publication of the Public Services Commission 93-page annual report (2011), described as “comprehensive but not exhaustive”, includes mention of the annulment of the selection process for some posts of medical consultant in our health service.

... a foreign assessor... on the selection board... proved successful...- Joseph A. Muscat, Ta’ Xbiex

The fair and proper selection of a candidate to occupy a post of medical consultant in a country such as Malta is always a complex and difficult process.

A medical consultant has to be a highly qualified and experienced doctor with a level of competence reached after long years of study, examinations and apprenticeship in his or her chosen speciality. Moreover, he or she has to have the character and disposition to recognise the responsibilities involved in the service of the least of his or her patients.

It is therefore no easy task to make the right choice and near impossible not to disappoint a number of worthy contestants.

The current selection process has evolved over a number of years during which important public bodies with a regulatory role such as the Medical Council and the Public Services Commission have been set up and played a notable part in the moulding of the said process.

The inclusion of a foreign assessor, often a highly reputable senior consultant from the UK, on the selection board for posts in the department of surgery was achieved some half century ago under the headship of A.J. Craig, a move which proved successful in the strengthening of the checks and balances of the whole process.

In the cases under review, the complaints advanced by the aggrieved parties, including the Medical Association of Malta, and accepted by the PSC hinge on the wording of the published calls for application.

It is evident that what was required was fully fledged, registered specialists who have fully completed their training as senior residents/assistants and were ready for consultant status.

With this in mind, I find the wording in the calls for application for so called “designate consultant leading to consultant” as inappropriate and misleading and largely responsible for the debacle of the entire process and its subsequent annulment.

As to the apportioning of responsabilities, this is best left to the right authorities. It is certainly not the business of MAM to be complainant, prosecutor, judge and jury all rolled into one.