AN influx of foreign doctors means just one in three is now classed as white British, astonishing new figures revealed yesterday.
Experts last night said they feared the tide of foreign-trained medics could put patients’ lives at risk because some may have poor English language skills.
The warning comes after a survey by the General Medical Council found only 37 per cent of the 240,000-strong medical register declared themselves as white British.
Separate figures revealed that more than 88,000 of that number were trained abroad.
The NHS now has doctors trained in 147 countries including Mongolia, Papua New Guinea and even Haiti, the poorest nation in the western world. More than 25,000 come from India.
Last year, Nigerian-born German doctor Daniel Ubani was banned from working in the UK after killing 70-year-old David Gray by giving him 10 times the maximum dose of a painkiller.
Ubani, who was on his first shift as an out-of-hours locum GP, later admitted his “fatal mistake” happened partly because he was unfamiliar with the drugs he was using.
He was allowed to work in Britain without checks because European laws forbid employers in the UK testing the skills of doctors qualified within the EU.
There are currently 22,000 foreign-born medics in the UK trained in EU member states.
In 2009, 51 doctors who qualified abroad were struck off. Twelve were from within Europe and 39 came from other countries. In the same year, six EU qualified doctors were suspended along with 39 from other countries.
1 comments:
Not only are their language skills poor, often their medical skills leave alot to be desired! Years ago there was an Indian "doctor" in Barnsley who had no idea how to take blood pressure, my Gran had to tell him he was doing it wrong and how to do it, and this same "doctor" prescribed penicillin for me after my Mum told him I was allergic to it! This same "doctor" also caused the death of an uncle after he told him the cancer he was suffering from was "colitis" until it was too late to do anything. Thankfully for the sick people of Barnsley, he is no longer around!
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