Hundreds of doctors work with no checks
From Mmc
Hundreds of doctors work with no checks
Rajeev Syal
Hundreds of junior doctors, including overseas staff, will be employed by hospitals from next week without undergoing proper security checks, The Times has learnt.
Hospital trusts have been unable to investigate the criminal records of trainees because they have received their names over the past two weeks – and checks take at least 28 days.
The delay has been blamed on the junior doctors training fiasco. Hospitals will take on a new rotation of trainees on August 1.
The disclosure will embarrass Gordon Brown, who pledged to tighten checks on medical staff after foreign junior doctors were arrested in connection with the failed attacks in Glasgow and London.
Trust managers told The Times yesterday that no checks would be made on some junior staff before they are put to work on wards.
Jeremy Levy, director of medical education at the Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust in West London, said: “Because the system is so chaotic, we have only been told of the identity of junior doctors starting with us over the last ten days.
“Last year, we were given three months’ notice, and so we could check their names with plenty of time to spare. But this year, we will have to start employing some doctors without any.
“Overseas doctors can take months to check. We will have no choice but to allow them to work until we have received full police clearance,” he said.
A trust official from the West Midlands told The Times that up to 30 overseas doctors would not be put through proper checks at her hospital. “It is impossible, given that we only received the names last week, to ensure that the certificates are good and true, and that the doctors are working legitimately. Our priority is to get people in position because we are so understaffed,” she said.
Matt Jameson-Evans, the co-founder of Remedy UK, the doctors’ pressure group, said that the lack of security checks has been brought on by a backlog of applications. “Not to have the statutory checks in place in the current climate adds insult to injury. The recruitment chaos is about to spill over into patient care,” he said.
Around 32,000 junior doctors will take up new training positions on August 1, as part of the annual training rotation. Three thousand have never worked for the NHS before and should undergo full security checks to ensure that they are fit to practise and do not put the public in danger, according to NHS guidelines.
Every new British-based doctor’s name is put through an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau check – which, according to the Home Office, takes around 28 days.
This should discover whether a person has a criminal record as well as checking “soft intelligence”, which would include allegations of misconduct that remain on police file.
Overseas doctors are supposed to be checked by the hospital. Most are asked to bring certification from their home countries, which is then verified by the authorities. The checking requirement can be set aside if there is evidence of a previous disclosure to an NHS employing organisation within the previous three years.
Shiv Pande, a former GMC treasurer and executive member of the British International Doctors Association, said that hospitals do not have time to check overseas doctors.
“Hospitals will have to examine many certificates of good standing from medical councils in countries such as India and Pakistan, but these can take weeks to verify,” he said.
The botched training system for junior doctors, called Modernising Medical Careers, was introduced by the Government this year.
It created a bottleneck as about 29,000 junior doctors who left medical school two, three and four years ago competed to get on the same rung of the training ladder, which has 15,600 places. Such applicants have already cost £250,000 in training.
An online recruitment scheme was abandoned in May after security glitches and widespread complaints from applicants who said that it failed to take proper account of qualifications. Research shows that one third of doctors who did not get a job in the first round of interviews had a first-class degree or distinction.
The Prime Minister announced a review of the recruitment of overseas staff to the NHS three weeks ago after the failed terror attacks.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said that it had not been made aware of a “generalised problem” with completing checks on doctors. “Of around 32,000 junior doctor applicants this year, over 29,000 are already working as NHS doctors, which means they will already have been subjected to checks.
“The situation for junior doctors coming from abroad is inevitably more complicated. Advice to NHS hospitals is that they should do whatever is possible to check the backgrounds of junior doctors from abroad, and the Criminal Records Bureau themselves can offer advice on how to do that,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the Healthcare Commission, the body that regulates the sector, said any trust that is unable to implement security checks should contact them. “All trusts need to declare where they have had a significant lapse in meeting this requirement. ” she said.
