The Royal College of Anaesthetists is to consider whether it has confidence in the UK National Health Service’s recruitment process, following revelations that it made serious mistakes in selecting candidates owing to inappropriate and poorly managed use of Microsoft Excel.
Last week The Register exclusively revealed that the body responsible for recruitment – the Anaesthetic National Recruitment Office (ANRO) – told all candidates for positions in Wales they were “unappointable” despite some of them achieving the highest interview scores.
A subsequent Significant Incident Review showed how seven differently formatted spreadsheets were combined into one using manual processes. An error meant “rank” was confused with the interview score, and the best candidate got a score of one. Since there were only 24 candidates, all were considered below the threshold interview score to be considered appointable.