UK doctors are taken for granted

While we might prefer the bedside manner of one medic over another, we take it as fact that we are receiving a uniform standard of medical care right across the board.

Many patients will therefore be concerned, to say the least, by the new report from University College London which found that 50 per cent of foreign doctors in the UK lack the qualifications of those who have been trained in this country.

Each year, around 1,300 medics from overseas are licensed by the General Medical Council. To achieve this, they have to pass a competence test which examines both their clinical and language skills.

However, the university says this is too easy, and the pass rate should be raised from 63 per cent to 76 per cent to 'ensure patient safety'.

And it does seem that there is something to be said for these concerns.

In 2012, 75 per cent of all the doctors who were struck off had been trained abroad, which does suggest that something is going wrong with the process for assessing physcians who have done their training overseas.

We are certainly not against foreign doctors coming to work in this country.

New figures show that NHS waiting lists have risen to their highest level for six years, and without the many excellent overseas doctors who have come to this country to heal the sick, those lists would be considerably higher.

But that is exactly the point.

Today, there are more than 88,000 foreign-trained physicians working in Britain, accounting for almost a third of the total.

With an ageing population, and ever-growing demands on our health service, the need for highly skilled doctors is only going to be heading in one direction.

And in order to meet those needs it is probably inevitable that were are going to become more reliant on medics from overseas.

It is only right and proper that they should face the same rigorous standards of training that our home-grown doctors do.