It is a long hard road between the bright-eyed medical student with a clutch of A-grade Advanced Highers and the fully-fledged hospital consultant, even when the route is relatively straightforward. Readers of The Herald will be well aware by now that as a result of the introduction of a disastrous online applications process, the route has been transformed this year into something of an obstacle course: questions that required students to reply in "psychobabble"; no CV setting out the level of experience and achievements; the treatment of the whole of Scotland as a single area, so that a student with family commitments in Glasgow could be sent to Wick. There have been suggestions that candidates could produce impressive-sounding applications by dint of some judicious cutting and pasting from the internet, while well-regarded doctors would be left jobless. The system was so lacking in coherence that there were allegations the wrong doctors could end up in the wrong posts in the wrong place. Hundreds of junior doctors signed protest petitions and joined marches, while many senior consultants also voiced their concerns.

It is a long hard road between the bright-eyed medical student with a clutch of A-grade Advanced Highers and the fully-fledged hospital consultant, even when the route is relatively straightforward. Readers of The Herald will be well aware by now that as a result of the introduction of a disastrous online applications process, the route has been transformed this year into something of an obstacle course: questions that required students to reply in "psychobabble"; no CV setting out the level of experience and achievements; the treatment of the whole of Scotland as a single area, so that a student with family commitments in Glasgow could be sent to Wick. There have been suggestions that candidates could produce impressive-sounding applications by dint of some judicious cutting and pasting from the internet, while well-regarded doctors would be left jobless. The system was so lacking in coherence that there were allegations the wrong doctors could end up in the wrong posts in the wrong place. Hundreds of junior doctors signed protest petitions and joined marches, while many senior consultants also voiced their concerns.

As a stop-gap measure, Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon announced that those without jobs on August 1 would have their current contracts extended for three months. With the October deadline now looming for hundreds of junior doctors in temporary locum jobs, it has emerged that they will be obliged to apply for new training posts using the same system that has been so comprehensively discredited. Some of them have settled in well and are performing with distinction. Yet, instead of being allowed to stay on and use the post as part of their training, they will be obliged to go back to square one, applying afresh for a job that may require them to move to the other end of the country. It is hard to see how that serves the interests of junior doctors, consultants, patients or the NHS as a whole. The system requires urgent re-examination and, at the very least, the reinstatement of a fully-fledged curriculum vitae.

For decades, the term junior doctor was synonymous with long hours and exploitation. They kept the NHS show on the road and lived on the promise of jam tomorrow. This issue has been tackled, thanks to the European Working Time Directive. Yet now junior doctors find themselves on the end of another short straw.