Is the nhs employing sub-standard doctors?

[Ramrod]

This is a question that has been raised by the UK/OZ bomb arrests story.
link

Mohammed Haneef is the relative of two of the suspects being held in Britain - Kafeel Ahmed, who was badly burned during the attack on Glasgow airport, and his brother, Sabeel, who was arrested in Liverpool.
It has emerged that the Ahmed brothers applied to work as doctors in Western Australia on numerous occasions but were rejected.

"We checked their qualifications and references and decided that they did not meet the standard required," Geoff Dobb, the president of the Australian Medical Association in Western Australia, told the Associated Press.

So why were they deemed suitably qualified to work here? Are the UK's standards too low or are those of the Australian Medical Assoc too high?
....and if this is happening with doctors working here, what is going on with nurses?

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Ramrod

This is a question that has been raised by the UK/OZ bomb arrests story.
link

So why were they deemed suitably qualified to work here? Are the UK's standards too low or are those of the Australian Medical Assoc too high?
....and if this is happening with doctors working here, what is going on with nurses?

Well judging by the standard of some of the NHS doctors and nurses we've come across during our numerous hospital visits, this sadly doesn't surprise me at all.

From what I've heard, the Australian's tend to cherry pick their overseas professionals but then their health system is different and much smaller than ours.

[danielf]

Perhaps there is less of a shortage in Australia, which means they raise the bar for foreign applicants? Just guessing

[BBKing]

According to informed sources...

There was a quota of overseas doctors in place (which is why there are, or were, 6000 Middle Eastern doctors here). There's no rhyme or reason for this unless you read it as a Blairite attempt to break the power of the doctor's clique - foreign doctors aren't here as long, can be put under more restrictive controls ('work in this hospital or get deported'), given worse jobs, without complaining as they don't have the powerful support of the generally politically well-connected middle class families British doctors have come from. You can probably pay them less and stop them becoming consultants, too (even more power and money saved). It's a Blairite hallmark that where Thatcher tried to break the power of the unions he took the fight into the professional middle classes.

All this sort of ended last year when the imminent glut of UK doctors appeared on the radar and there was a concerted attempt to boot out a lot of the foreign ones, contrary to a previous agreement that once you were in, you were in. There's a court case about it.

There's a very interesting leaked email on this, where it's suggested that the major reason behind changing the way doctors are recruited was to discriminate against foreign doctors. Naturally, the cumulative effect of this means the foreign doctors are stressed and annoyed at the UK. See the BAPIO website for details: http://www.bapio.co.uk/

[Escapee]

There does appear to be more cases of foreign doctors being 'found out' it is of course due to records not being so easily verified and some of these people coming from countries where morals are much lower.

I knew last year of one (Nigerian) who was kicked out of one hospital here in South Wales for not being able to produce claimed qualifications and documentation. He then sprung up in another South Wales hospital using a different name about 40 miles away working as a dentist, after they were tipped off he was removed his job.

This of course all happened without any fuss or media coverage, so it could be a common way of dealing with these sort of people.

I'm not sure which hospital he is working in now, but I would have a tenner that he is working in one somewhere.

[Ramrod]

So far so worrying.......Salu, whats your take on this?