Hiring too many foreign doctors 'puts lives at risk'

[Dedworth]

Says a consultant surgeon at The Royal Marsden Hospital

Hiring too many foreign doctors 'puts lives at risk': Senior surgeon criticises poor language skills and lack of training

• Just over half of new doctors each year come from British medical schools
• Dr J Meirion Thomas said too many foreign doctors had poor language skills
• He also said many had not received up-to-date training in their country

Patients are being put at risk because no fewer than 40 per cent of doctors taken on by the NHS every year are foreign, a top cancer surgeon has warned.
Dr J Meirion Thomas said far too many of them had poor language skills, knew nothing about our culture and had not received up-to-date training in their own country.
Out of around 13,000 new doctors registered by the General Medical Council every year, just 7,000 come from British medical schools.
Meanwhile the NHS is becoming a ‘bonanza’ for doctors arriving in increasing numbers from Greece, Spain and eastern Europe.
Dr Thomas, a consultant surgeon at The Royal Marsden Hospital in London, also hit out at the poor quality of family doctors, saying the only reason A&E departments were at ‘breaking point’ was because many GPs were ‘not good enough’.
Dr Thomas has already exposed failings in the NHS in a series of trenchant articles for the Daily Mail. Earlier this year he raised the alarm over the number of foreign patients being treated for free by the NHS, saying it was costing taxpayers millions of pounds a year.
In an article for The Spectator magazine this week, he called on Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to scrap expensive NHS IT schemes and spend the billions saved on ‘training more British doctors’.
‘This is an essential building block of a durable recovery,’ he said.
He went on: ‘Most readers will be surprised to learn that every year, we import 40 per cent of our doctors because of insufficient training places in British medical schools.
‘We encourage young people to become doctors, then we slap them back for want of places.

‘So 40 per cent of doctors starting work in the NHS every year have little or no knowledge and experience of British culture or of our Health Service – and this in the most people-centric occupation of all. It really does matter.’
Dr Thomas blamed the Government for not wanting to pay for more expensive places – a failing which was opening the door to doctors from Europe and beyond. ‘From the foreign doc’s perspective, working for the NHS is a bonanza,’ he said. ‘European doctors fly in to cover locum vacancies, especially in general practice. There is no test of language proficiency before registering.
‘As a result of austerity in southern Europe, there has been a significant increase in GMC registrations of newly-qualified doctors from Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and especially eastern Europe.’He said the reliance on overseas doctors meant there were real risks to patient safety. ‘Importing doctors from abroad might not be a bad thing if there were any guarantee the entry criteria to foreign medical schools were as rigorous as our own,’ he said.
‘A GMC survey published in the British Medical Journal recently showed foreign-trained doctors were up to four times more likely to be suspended or struck off than their UK colleagues. Defenders of the system say there are filters in place to weed out dodgy doctors.
‘But where was the filter that checked the competence of Dr Daniel Ubani, a Nigerian-born German citizen who on his first GP locum in the UK unlawfully killed a 70-year-old man?’
Dr Thomas also used his article to hit out at GPs, saying they were so old-fashioned that patients had no option but to turn up at hard-pressed A&E departments.
‘Modern medicine has been revolutionised by technology, little of which has filtered down into general practice,’ he said.
‘GPs cannot carry out certain essential tests quickly. It is very easy for GPs to become “de-skilled” and by mid-career some may not be well enough informed to manage serious acute illnesses.
‘No wonder, then, that patients with acute problems prefer to go to A&E; it’s because GP services aren’t good enough: which is why A&E units are at breaking point.’


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2c42bPTSB

Well done Doc Thomas for speaking out it is successive governments and the trough feeding, overpaid management who have allowed the NHS to become the shambles it now is

[Michael Parnham]

Too many foreigners puts lives at risk also

[joebloggs]

dedworth i wonder if he has any idea what he is talking about seeing he's not a GP and I wonder if he has spent even a day working in a GP surgery

he seems to be talking about EU doctors, as Doctors from outside the EU need to pass IELTS academic with at least 7.0 in each section.

[andy222]

he seems to be talking about EU doctors, as Doctors from outside the EU need to pass IELTS academic with at least 7.0 in each section.

I think you mean they should pass the I.E.L.T.S test Joe. Can you read their writing? Me being a sceptic I think there is a lot of fake documentation about.

[joebloggs]

I think you mean they should pass the I.E.L.T.S test Joe. Can you read their writing? Me being a sceptic I think there is a lot of fake documentation about.

i was up at 3am
i don't think you can read any doctors writing, British, European or those from outside the EU, its like a spider has crawled over the page maybe its some code they learn at med school

well GMC are suppose to check their docs, and i'm sure they do

[Dedworth]

dedworth i wonder if he has any idea what he is talking about seeing he's not a GP and I wonder if he has spent even a day working in a GP surgery

he's seems to be talking about EU doctors, as Doctors from outside the EU need to pass IELTS academic with at least 7.0 in each section.

Not sure if it was too late when you posted or if its tongue in cheek re my previous NHS moans.

From the thrust of the article he's mainly talking about hospitalk doctors but he does mention General Practice and says this as an overall statement :-

‘As a result of austerity in southern Europe, there has been a significant increase in GMC registrations of newly-qualified doctors from Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and especially eastern Europe.’

Have you read the readers comments underneath the Mail article - one says he/she saw 5 docs at hospital and they could only understand the last one who was British.

I think this situation has been going on a lot longer than we think - 16 years ago I recall talking to (if you can call it that) a 60 year old Hungarian anesthetist at an NHS hospital and in broken English he told me he was there because there weren't enough Brit trained ones. This was some 7 years before Hungary joined the EU.

[Doc Alan]

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but if you read the full article by the surgical professor ( not the Daily Mail’s interpretation ), nowhere does he call the NHS " a shambles ". His opinions concern the English NHS and Health Secretary. Also, as a surgeon he WOULD say what he does – I worked with surgeons for 35 years. Furthermore, as an academic he wouldn’t be expected to understand the vital role of general practice, any more than a GP would understand major surgery.



He claims that GPs are " professionally isolated " and " deskilled " . He failed to mention that ALL the UK’s 235,000 licensed doctors are now legally required to show the GMC that they are competent and fit to practise. The system ( introduced in the past year ) is based on annual appraisal to which doctors must bring information about their practice, including complaints - and compliments - from patients, as well as evidence they are keeping up to date ( attending approved courses as well as reading ). No system – neither the NHS, nor the GMC who independently regulates doctors, medical schools and postgraduate education / training – is perfect.


It’s true that only around 2/3 of doctors gained their primary medical qualification in the UK. Of the rest, 1/10 are from India, followed by Pakistan and South Africa. It’s also true that cost is a factor in the numbers of medical students accepted in the 33 UK medical schools - around £ 250,000 of taxpayers’ money for each student trained to become a doctor. Most ( but not all ) UK residents may prefer a health service run by doctors trained in the UK. A significant number might prefer a doctor from similar ethnic background to themselves.


However, it’s not a simple matter of training them ALL here, as there’s no guarantee they would stay in the UK. There’s even less likelihood that they would be happy to become " hybrid GP / A&E " doctors ( one of the surgeon’s suggested remedies ), or take up various other unpopular – but essential – specialties.


Not only is the GMC to have new powers for checking communication skills of EU doctors ( as it already can for non-EU doctors ), but employers are already entitled to check English / communication skills appropriate for the specialty ( and ethnic mix of the patients ).


As for doctors’ " notorious handwriting ", that’s a myth which, even if it were true, is less relevant now that prescriptions, referral and discharge letters are not handwritten !


Of course the UK NHS has room for improvement ! It has also to respond to challenges such as the ageing population; and ever increasing costs of treatments which could not have been imagined a few years ago. It’s vital to stay POSITIVE – there are improvements in every aspect of healthcare, from cancer, strokes and heart attacks to medicinal drugs, vaccinations and transplants.


I don’t judge lifestyle choices, but the true shambles is not, in my opinion, the health service. It’s largely the consequences of inactivity, obesity, alcohol excess and continued smoking. A healthier lifestyle and less litigation / criticism of doctors, nurses, and other health care workers would cut costs more than any of the good surgeon’s proposals.


Finally, as always, this is a FILIPINO-UK Forum . Spare a thought for our friends and loved ones in the Philippines. The entire health service there may not " suck " ( as one member recently suggested ) but sadly it doesn’t match up to ours.

[Terpe]

Very interesting Doc Alan
Good reading.

Thanks for your efforts.

[joebloggs]

Furthermore, as an academic he wouldn’t be expected to understand the vital role of general practice, any more than a GP would understand major surgery.

As for doctors’ " notorious handwriting ", that’s a myth which, even if it were true, is less relevant now that prescriptions, referral and discharge letters are not handwritten !

i was joking about the handwriting