Friday 25 August 2017

Bar to be lowered for trainee doctors to become GPs. Licence to kill gets easier

This is the deliberately misleading PC correct headline in the Daily Telegraph of 23rd August. The same story in the web edition it is more accurately entitled

Revealed: Health chiefs plan to make it easier for failing trainees and foreign medics to become GPs

read all about it below.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/22/revealed-health-chiefs-plan-make-easier-failing-trainees-foreign/

People are now asking why do we have to import foreign doctors at all. I ask why are they being allowed 6 attempts, up from 4 previously at passing a pretty easy exam.Good questions. the response of the so called Royal College of GPs on which Asians are well represented. and the NHS is to look at  'streamlining' the GP accreditation process for those who trained abroad. Streamling is of course just spin  for make easier. Crucially who checks their qualifications and they are who they say they are. How many Mohammed Khans claim to be doctors in Pakistan? No one takes responsibility for that basic check. Ask the DHSS.

People then ask why do we not train our own children to become doctors? I have been married to a consultant medic for 32 years so I know a little bit about this scandal.. Every one of these 32 years well qualified British children have been refused entry to UK medical schools. Why? The BMA, the medics trade union want to keep the supply of doctors scarce to keep salaries high and private practice very lucrative. That,s economics not medicine.

This is a characteristic of the UK professional system not just in medicine but also in law. We can't have unemployed doctors the BMA bleats, they are so expensive to train but if you don't have an oversupply there is no job competition and medical salaries go up an up.

About 25 years ago I gave a lecture at a German scientific meeting in  Heidelberg at which the main speaker was the German health minister. He was quite clear that they did not want Asian doctors in Germany, we will train our own children to be doctors and they did, and even produced a surplus of trained doctors. This kept a lid on medical salaries leading to many German medics being employed in our NHS many as locums. My wife had one these guys working for her and when I asked him if he could not get a job in Germany he replied Yes he could but the NHS paid lots more money.

So Mr Hunt why can the Germans do this and we can't. The answer lies in the British political elite's addiction to quick fixes, we have just employed another 100 doctors etc, and inability to do any long term planing or as one UK minister put it to me, we are not interested in solving the next government's problems. Short term-ism is endemic in the entire UK political system, PMQs and all. Party interest comes first and the country last. Party interest translates to keeping the other lot out of government at all costs.

I weep for our country run by these selfish PPE types. No wonder the ordinary people are unhappy. Party self interest of the political elite rules us from cradle to grave.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dr Edmond, your point re this country's failure to plan ahead and ensure an adequate supply of medical staff who have been educated and trained in this country is well made.

Eric Edmond said...

Thank you anon but it was the human cost of young Brits who desperately wanted to be doctors but were turned down by the medical establishment that really concerned me. It was a horrible tragic waste of young people's legitimate hopes and ambitions.