Aus- Long-serving rural GPs deregistered amid crackdown on international doctors

[Mighty AU]

International doctors who have worked in regional areas for many years are being deemed incompetent and deregistered amid an Australian Medical Board crackdown.

Key points
Four out of five overseas doctors failing AMB's clinical exam as grace period ends

Questions raised as to quality of practice in rural and regional areas over last decade

Deregistration sparks fears for hundreds of patients

Rural areas already battling shortage of medical professionals

Four out of five overseas doctors, some of whom have worked in small towns for as many as 10 years, are failing a clinical exam set by the AMB designed to prove they meet national standards.

Historically overseas doctors were not required to sit any local exams before they were placed in 'areas of need' across rural Australia, where more than 3000 foreign doctors are currently practising.

"Ideally all doctors who worked in Australia would have the full qualifications before they started work, but we had a need," AMB chair Dr Joanna Flynn AM said.

"But the expectation that those doctors will meet the Australian standard has become clearer.

"If their performance in the exam is at a very low level it raises questions about whether they are actually safe to practice."

Grace period ends with a vengeance

In 2013 all international doctors were told they had three years to pass the clinical exam or face deregistration.

Dr Flynn said there was a period of leniency, where many doctors were given extensions, but that time had come to an end.

"The board has a set of standards which are now being very deliberately implemented," she said.

"For some people that raises the bar that they have to cross, to be able to either get into the workplace in the first place or remain in the workplace."

The question remains — were these doctors incompetent throughout the many years of treating patients? Or has the definition of 'incompetent' simply been changed?

Award-winning doctor dumped

Dr Maurice Haddad was an orthopaedic surgeon in Argentina for 30 years before bringing his wife and three sons to Australia.

His family settled in Melbourne, but Dr Haddad started work as a supervised GP in the small rural town of Wonthaggi.

...

Dr Haddad became the only doctor in the region to deliver the methadone program to drug-dependent patients.

His surgical experience also meant he could cut out skin cancers and save rural patients the drive to Melbourne.

In 2011 the then-Victorian Health Minister David Davis presented him with an award for an 'outstanding contribution to rural communities'.

But Dr Haddad could not pass the Australian exams in the time allocated by the AMB.

He was seeing more than 120 patients when authorities removed his registration.

"They fail you, and in the end I lost everything," he said.

"You are nothing [without registration]. You don't qualify to be anything — only a cleaner."

Dr Haddad's supervisor Dr Howard McCormick described the Argentinian doctor as "amazing" and said his failure to pass Australian exams did not reflect his competence to treat patients.

"I've been in general practice for 40 years [in Australia] and I would find it a challenge to pass the exam, even with my knowledge," he said.

"I would have to learn the exam skills, which are in addition to my consulting skills, which I use every day.

"Our whole town has suffered [following the de-registering of Dr Haddad].

"Our clinic has suffered considerably and our patients have suffered."

Read the rest of the article at Doctors deemed incompetent and stripped of registration after ye..

Edit:

It’s a terrible dilemma which Australia is suffering from at the moment. On the one hand, all GPs should be sufficiently competent. But on the other hand, we already had a severe shortage of GPs in regional and rural areas, and doctors with an international background were among those who were most willing to help out. But this crackdown will lead to many of those doctors being deregistered.

[Azza]

Incompetent doctors is a big issue, especially overseas doctors, Ive had a bunch of nightmare fuckup, and one was with a misdiagnosis of mengitis which was missed because of this reason.

They need to be heavily scrutinized before being able to practice here, so they are up to Australian standards.

Also there needs to be more benefits for doctors moving to rural areas to make it more desirable.

[HumanAbyss]

Considering an Australian doctor said he couldn’t pass it as exam skills are different than in practice skills there may be something to look further at here

[JaffaOrange]

So what happens to these communities? Do the doctors that remain just get (even more) overworked or even worse, go without a doctor?

[Mighty AU]

There are already huge incentives to encourage doctors to move to rural areas. Eg I recall in a previous article that a rural practice was so desperate for doctors that they offered a house and a car, alongside of the salary of course, for any doctor who wanted the job. Probably no one wants to work in a rural or regional practice as that’s where careers go to die.