I refer to your article (Careers in chaos, June 22) concerning the lack of prospects open to junior doctors wanting to pursue their training in Scotland. The purpose of my writing is to highlight the actions we have and are taking to ensure that our NHS continues to attract the best possible candidates for the training posts we have available. I remain convinced that the introduction of Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) is right and will lead to a more rational approach to training for doctors in Scotland.

I refer to your article (Careers in chaos, June 22) concerning the lack of prospects open to junior doctors wanting to pursue their training in Scotland. The purpose of my writing is to highlight the actions we have and are taking to ensure that our NHS continues to attract the best possible candidates for the training posts we have available. I remain convinced that the introduction of Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) is right and will lead to a more rational approach to training for doctors in Scotland.

Scotland has taken a series of substantive measures in responding to the challenges of implementing MMC. These include going beyond the UK Review Group recommendations by offering all eligible applicants to Scotland an interview for the posts they applied for in this country; working in partnership with the BMA, NHS Scotland employers, the Scottish Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and NHS Education Scotland to deliver the best possible solutions for Scotland's doctors; stepping aside from the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) and undertaking recruitment through our contingency planning arrangements; using direct electronic communications to all applicants to Scotland to ensure they are updated on an ongoing basis; and creating more specialty training opportunities this year than ever before.

Throughout, Scotland has responded flexibly and pragmatically and I intend to ensure this continues.

MMC has been designed to be a transparent, objective and structured process, based on an applicant's competence to work in their chosen specialties. Selection is based on performance at interview, and in a highly competitive profession such as medicine, not every applicant will, or has ever been able to, secure a training post in the specialty or location of their choice.

I am very aware that this has been and continues to be an anxious and stressful time for junior doctors and understand the difficulties some are facing as we make the transition to the new system.

Across the UK, recruitment to specialty training is still ongoing and it is impossible, therefore, to predict what the end result will be. In Scotland, recruitment is going extremely well and I am pleased that so many excellent candidates have already accepted training posts.

The Scottish government values the contribution made by its doctors in training and their commitment to the NHS. We are currently analysing the application and offer data to determine the impact on Scotland's medical trainees. We are also considering how best to support them. Nothing has been ruled out at this stage.

I am determined to do what is right for Scotland. I will reflect on the lessons from the recruitment and selection process this year, and the outcomes of the independent review of MMC, and if necessary will consider different arrangements for 2008 and beyond in Scotland. This will ensure that NHS Scotland continues to attract the best possible candidates in future and that we continue to do everything we can to ensure that doctors trained in Scotland have every opportunity to work and develop their careers here.

Nicola Sturgeon MSP, Deputy First Minister & Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Scottish Executive.

Disastrously flawed
Your article, Junior doctors: new system leaves careers in chaos, did an excellent job in capturing the human side of the scandal that is the new junior doctors' training scheme.

Unless you have been involved in it and have lived and breathed it for the past five months, it is impossible to understand how disastrous MTAS has been. I am due to become a consultant next year and I know three junior doctors who have been applying for jobs through MTAS.

All three are outstanding candidates with first-rate CVs that would have guaranteed them (as the deserved result of their own hard work) jobs within the system that MTAS replaced. All three failed to receive job offers through the present scheme and their families now face turmoil, upheaval and personal, professional and financial uncertainty.

Every aspect of the new scheme has been disastrously flawed.

It was flawed in its concept (of having a system where "competence" is desired and assessed in equal measure to an array of abstract qualities seemingly derived from some 1960s psychometric test).

It was flawed in its infrastructure (with a website that was meant to cope with tens of thousands of doctors filling in complex application forms online with deadlines hours away - that in practice crashed repeatedly, losing all data, and couldn't cope with the demand).

And it was also flawed in both its security (personal details of the applicants were accidentally released to all via the website) and its implementation (with many instances of the wrong doctors being called for interview, or doctors being told that they had an interview, involving a presentation, at the other end of the country with two or three days' notice).

The outcome is thousands of doctors now facing the dole queue.

The only fair solution to this shambles is to tear up every aspect of what has been implemented and decided over the past five months, and reinterview everyone using the previous scheme which has been tried and tested over decades. I personally don't believe that there was much wrong with the previous CV-based system - but even if there was, then this new fiasco is certainly a case of the treatment being far worse than the disease.

Dr Martyn Spencer, Morningside Park, Edinburgh.

Who caused mess?
Doctors of my generation look on with jaw-dropping incredulity at the chaos, extensively reported in The Herald (June 22), that has ensued following the introduction of the MTAS. Where else within society would a situation be tolerated in which a whole cohort of talented young people is left wondering whether their training will continue, whether they will be employed at all and, if they are, whether they will have to face working in different cities from their spouses and families?

Scotland has tried to extract sense from this debacle, which has emanated from the Department of Health in England, but the blandishments of the new Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, provide little solace.

Two of the architects of the original scheme, Modernising Medical Careers, (Professors Heard and Crockard) have resigned, and the BMA Council chairman has had to fall on his sword. Three medical casualties have emerged - but where is the accountability for this mess among ministers and civil servants?

This is not just about doctors and their careers and families - it is about stable training arrangements for high-quality patient care - and Scotland's patients deserve better.

Dr Brian D Keighley, The Clinic, Balfron.