By Mark Smulian | 26 September 2011
The NHS Confederation has called for tougher checks on the movement of health care workers around the European Union.
The confederation, which represents organisations within the NHS, wants to protect patients from poorly skilled or fraudulent staff using freedom of movement rights to work in other countries.
It was responding to the European Commission’s review of the Professional Qualifications Directive, which aims to make it easier for professionals qualified in one European Union state to work in others.
The confederation called for exceptions for health care staff, arguing that freedom of movement should not be achieved at the expense of patient safety. It wants a European-wide alert system for regulators to warn each other if bogus or incompetent workers try to move between countries.
UK regulatory bodies must be able to check the qualifications and competence, including language skills, of health workers arriving to practise here from elsewhere in the EU, it said.
It also called for all member states to require health professionals to keep their skills up to date, rather than being registered to practise for life.
Elisabetta Zanon, director of the confederation’s European Office, said that almost 10% of doctors working in the UK were from other member states, and ‘we could not cope without them’.
But she warned: ‘There is a tension that needs resolving. On the one hand we have the understandable desire to simplify and speed up recognition of professionals.
‘On the other, the NHS needs to ensure the right checks and balances are in place to protect patients from dangerous care from health professionals. We want to work with the European Commission to address this.’
