Thursday 4 February 2010

European Law the problem

The coroner has ruled that a patient's death was unlawful after an incompetent German doctor who couldn't speak English properly gave him a fatal overdose of diamorphine. The case of David Gray has been well known and shows just how lethal the free labour market of the EU is. It is something I have harped on about here many times before.

It is simply beyond belief that the GMC are not allowed to check the English speaking and the medical competence of doctors who are registered with non-UK European countries who then wish to work in the UK. This is thanks to European law and it is a complete farce.

The German killer Daniel Abani is only the tip of the iceberg, every doctor, myself included could tell you numerous stories of various completely incompetent EU doctors who have worked upon these shores in recent years. The GMC's hands are tied by European law.

The government and DoH will try to pin the blame on the PCTs, this is rubbish, there are over one hundred PCTS and it would be ludicrous to expect these organisations or other employers to individually assess the competence of doctors they employ, this should be done by the regulator, the GMC.

The fault here lies squarely with the government for signing us up to these ridiculous and poorly constructed European laws, they have signed away our autonomy and our ability to properly run our own shop, in the process numerous bungling incompetent doctors are now free to work on our shores and there appears very little that can be done about it.

Niall Dickson, the new GMC chief, is in full agreement with me on this, he wants the GMC to be given the powers to regulate doctors properly, after all if it can't do that what can it do? The most shocking thing is that the current European system is a lethal farce, Daniel Abani is still able to work in all EU countries other than the UK, he is only struck off here.

3 comments:

Old Codger said...

Agreed, the free movement of labour laws can have this effect. The argument though is that they are necessary to prevent discrimination of foreigners. I do wonder though how far an Englishman with no foreign languages would get applying for (almost any) job in France or Germany.

In my view, the biggest mistake was in removing the responsibility from the patient's GP. Undoubtedly small practices were seriously overstretched providing 24/7 cover and that problem needed solving. If the solution had provided the necessary assistance whilst leaving the responsibility with the GP (together with the authority to exercise that responsibility) the selection of locums would have been significantly improved.

matt said...

if someone is a doctor they need to be qualified to do the job. If your a doctor in the UK they need to be able to speak the language as would someone who worked in Russia needs to speak russian.

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