Heather Roy's Diary Tackles Foreign Doctors
act-new-zealand
Fri Jun 22 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Heather Roy's Diary Tackles Foreign Doctors
Friday, 22 June 2007, 11:57 am
Press Release: ACT New Zealand
Heather Roy's Diary
Foreign Doctors - Can't Live With 'Em; Can't Live Without 'Em
There's been a lot said recently about 'foreign doctors', and much of it has been hostile. Foreign-trained doctors have no control over their skin colour or their accent when speaking in a second language. My first criteria when looking for a doctor is that they are competent.
While there has been a slow trickle of newspaper articles about the foreign doctors 'problem' for years now, it was a Czech surgeon's spectacular failure in six cases of tubal ligation (sterilisation) - resulting in pregnancy - that produced a crescendo of unjustified hysteria.
The first point to make is that 'overseas trained' is not the same as 'inferior' - my husband, a New Zealand-trained doctor himself, was once asked to 'supervise' a graduate from Yale Medical School who had run an A&E Department in the US for 20 years. In other words, he had qualifications and experience superior to my husband's - and Yale is one of the best medical schools in the world - but US qualifications are not recognised in New Zealand simply because the US America doesn't recognise ours. In the global marketplace this 'tit-for-tat' attitude needs to be reviewed.
The second point to make is that it costs a lot of money to train a doctor - most of which comes from the taxpayer. Every time one of 'ours' leaves early in their career, the taxpayer sees a nil return on their considerable investment. If we recruit a doctor from overseas, then we effectively get a free pass because the training cost has been met by someone else.
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The truth is that most doctors who trained overseas are an asset, not a liability, to the country. What's more, we simply couldn't do without them, as they make up a large proportion of the medical workforce and there's no hope of enough New Zealand graduates being trained to replace them. In fact, we're going to have to recruit more foreign doctors - although it would be useful to ask why so many Kiwi medics feel the need to leave.
While it's not news that there's a manpower shortage in health, what most people don't know is that there's complete policy paralysis in the face of that shortage. The Health Workforce Advisory Committee was formed in 2000 but, after six years of committee meetings and $3.5 million in expenditure, it failed to produce any practical recommendations.
Having done little more than produce annual reports, the HWAC was killed off last year. The looming manpower gap was so large that few could get their head around it. An 'Action' committee was to be formed but there has been little sign of thought, let alone action.
In her time as Health Minister, Annette King was asked what she would do about difficulties recruiting hospital specialists. She said she could do nothing as it took (after a basic medical degree) five years to train a surgeon, and seven to train a psychiatrist. The numbers weren't quite right, but the point is that she was saying "don't look to me for answers."
The real answers lie in a radically different approach to the provision of healthcare. We could begin by embracing the global market in doctors, recognising that we have more to gain than lose by allowing it to function.
We should ask the Medical Council to list all the medical schools in the world that can be relied on to produce graduates of a quality comparable to our own or better. The graduates of those medical schools should be able to register to work in New Zealand subject (where appropriate) to a language test. And no red tape. If the country in question doesn't recognise our qualifications, then we should just swallow our pride and proceed. The stakes are too high to worry about being slighted.
We should never get too pessimistic about healthcare. Life expectancy is rising rapidly, and advances in keyhole surgery have hugely boosted surgical productivity. But remember where the gains come from - advances in science and technology, not Ministerial taskforces.
Lest We Forget June 21 1942: Over breakfast at the White House, Winston Churchill was informed that the 25,000-strong British garrison in Tobruk, Libya had surrendered to a German force half its size. As Churchill sat in stunned silence, President Roosevelt asked "How can we help?"
What followed were three days of discussions and decision-making that helped dramatically turn the tide of WWII. Included in the US package were 300 Sherman tanks and 100 105mm howitzers that were immediately dispatched to North Africa. They made all the difference at El Alamein - yet, today, people still ask why Tony Blair sent British troops to Iraq.
June 22 1941: Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Over two million troops, 3,300 tanks and 2,700 aircraft were involved on the first day. The launch date had been postponed twice for a total of five weeks due to heavier than expected resistance to the earlier German invasion of Greece and the Balkans - the NZ Division in Greece and Crete deserves considerable credit for much of the delay. Within months, the Germans were bogged down by a particularly harsh Russian winter, strained supply lines and the tenacity of the defenders.
June 21 1864: Captain Frederick Smith (43rd Regiment) and Sergeant John Murray (68th Regiment) both received the Victoria Cross for their actions during the New Zealand Wars.
ENDS
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