Rules on foreign doctors 'put patient safety at risk'

British patients are at risk from foreign doctors who are unfit to practise because EU laws put freedom of movement ahead of the safety of patients, leading clinicians have claimed.

Dr Hamish Meldrum, chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) council, said that European employment law and other countries' refusal to share information from their medical registers meant British medical regulators were sometimes powerless to guarantee foreign doctors' capability.

It raises the prospect that a doctor banned from practising in one country could be registered in Britain without the General Medical Council being aware of their prior record for incompetence.

EU laws mean the General Medical Council (GMC) can not test the clinical capability or language skills of European-qualified doctors as they can with those from other parts of the world.

Unlike the GMC, many European countries refuse to reveal information about malpractice hearings.

At a BMA meeting in Cardiff yesterday, Dr Meldrum said: "If a doctor was struck off and the GMC knew about it then I think the likelihood of them being able to practice is probably quite low, but the problem is whether the GMC always knows about it and also knows the reasons as to why it happened.

"We are aware of several cases where doctors have been removed from the medical register in this country because of fitness to practice problems, but are still practicing elsewhere in the EU. I am afraid EU law seems to put freedom of movement rather higher than protection of patients."

Daniel Ubani, a German-qualified cosmetic surgeon, was working as a locum out-of-hours GP in Cambridgeshire when he accidentally killed 70-year-old David Gray with a tenfold overdose of painkillers in 2008.

The GMC had been unable to verify whether Ubani had ever worked as a GP in Germany because his license automatically gave him the right to work in Britian. He can still practise in Germany.

Dr Meldrum added: "We saw with the Ubani case how he was found guilty in the UK and yet he is still practicing in Germany and that doesn't seem to be satisfactory."

Dr John Fitton, a GP from Kettering, Northamptonshire, said: "It should be unacceptable that a doctor who is found to be incompetent or untrustworthy in one jurisdiction of the country might equally be able to find employers in another."

The European Commission has launched a green paper consulting member nations on the prospect an international alert system when a doctor is found unfit to practise.

Niall Dickson, GMC Chief Executive, said: "This is about patient safety. When we take action against a doctor we actively tell other regulators.

"We want other regulators across Europe to do the same and have urged the European Commission to put a duty on them to do this. We believe all regulators must share this vital information in order to keep patients safe."

SOURCE