Foreign doctors 'should speak English'
FOREIGN doctors should not be allowed to provide out-of-hours care to patients unless they speak good English and work as part of a team, senior medics have said.
The demand comes after German doctor Daniel Ubani was struck off for administering a fatal overdose to a patient in Cambridgeshire.
He had flown into Britain on a Friday night to work as an out-of-hours GP even though his English was poor and he had no understanding of British medicines or NHS working practices.
Dr Paul Cosford and Dr Justyn Thomas, from NHS East of England, wrote on the British Medical Journal’s website, BMJ.com, that the General Medical Council should test foreign doctors to ensure that they are fit to practise in Britain.
“This is not to prevent the free movement of well-qualified doctors,” they wrote, “but to recognise that healthcare systems differ across the EU and that doctors’ competence is at least partly specific to the system in which they work.”