The story of the German GP who negligently killed an English patient whilst working as an out of hours GP locum has been in the news a lot recently, and quite rightly so. It appears that this was not an isolated incident either, this GP was clearly way out of his depth and other patients died that day.
I do not wish to dwell on this case because it is the theme that is important, the theme being the fact that non-UK trained doctors from the EU can easily register with the GMC after only the most minimal of checks, they are then free to compete with our own doctors for jobs, despite the fact that their education and training may not be nearly comprehensive enough to prepare them for the work they will be doing in the NHS. We now know that these EU trained doctors can then kill patients negligently, return home, receive the lightest of punishments and then return to practice as if nothing has happened. This is a disgrace.
If there is going to be a free market of labour in the EU in terms of health care work, then there must be a rigorous system of regulation in place that holds people to account if they make negligent errors whilst working away from their homeland. The blame lies squarely at the door of the government who have signed us up for this free market of labour without thinking of the serious consequences of a dangerously patchy system of regulation. Any doctor working in the NHS will tell you how they have encountered several non-UK trained doctors from the EU who have shockingly bad language skills and who lack even the most basic of medical knowledge, yet strangely they had no trouble getting their full registration from the GMC. This is not good enough.
There are many medical schools in certain EU countries that do not train doctors to the level of competence that our own UK graduates achieve, however the GMC cares not for the standard of your medical degree, any EU degree is good enough for them, while their language test is so easy that even a martian could secure top marks. Bizarrely excellent Australian and New Zealand graduates are now faced with a mountain of stupid paperwork before they can practice in the UK, while some of their dangerous counterparts from the backwaters of the EU can get in without any trouble at all. Well done the government and well done the GMC. Although the free labour market helps you push people around, it is killing patients at the same time, well done.
I do not wish to dwell on this case because it is the theme that is important, the theme being the fact that non-UK trained doctors from the EU can easily register with the GMC after only the most minimal of checks, they are then free to compete with our own doctors for jobs, despite the fact that their education and training may not be nearly comprehensive enough to prepare them for the work they will be doing in the NHS. We now know that these EU trained doctors can then kill patients negligently, return home, receive the lightest of punishments and then return to practice as if nothing has happened. This is a disgrace.
If there is going to be a free market of labour in the EU in terms of health care work, then there must be a rigorous system of regulation in place that holds people to account if they make negligent errors whilst working away from their homeland. The blame lies squarely at the door of the government who have signed us up for this free market of labour without thinking of the serious consequences of a dangerously patchy system of regulation. Any doctor working in the NHS will tell you how they have encountered several non-UK trained doctors from the EU who have shockingly bad language skills and who lack even the most basic of medical knowledge, yet strangely they had no trouble getting their full registration from the GMC. This is not good enough.
There are many medical schools in certain EU countries that do not train doctors to the level of competence that our own UK graduates achieve, however the GMC cares not for the standard of your medical degree, any EU degree is good enough for them, while their language test is so easy that even a martian could secure top marks. Bizarrely excellent Australian and New Zealand graduates are now faced with a mountain of stupid paperwork before they can practice in the UK, while some of their dangerous counterparts from the backwaters of the EU can get in without any trouble at all. Well done the government and well done the GMC. Although the free labour market helps you push people around, it is killing patients at the same time, well done.
