Doctors’ acceptance rights under review

Press, 5 December 1984, Page 14

Doctors’ acceptance rights under review

NZPA staff correspondent London The right of New Zealand doctors to have their qualifications fully and immediately accepted in Britain is under review by the General Medical Council. A spokesman for the council, a statutory body responsible for the registration and discipline of British doctors, told NZPA that a working party had been established to consider whether New Zealand and other “Old Commonwealth” doctors should be given special treatment. Doctors graduating from a total of 22 universities in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, the West Indies, and Malaya are granted full registration in Britain after meeting minimal requirements. They must first show they are of “good char-

acter” in their home country, understand English well, and have practical experience equivalent to that necessary for British doctors to gain registration. Other doctors can apply only for limited registration, for which they must first pass proficiency and English tests and which lasts a maximum of only five years. After that they must sit the normal British examinations, though in rare cases they can receive full registration at the G.M.C.'s discretion.

The whole question will be considered by the council at its next meeting in May next year. The G.M.C. spokesman was reluctant to comment while the matter was still being discussed, but a report in the “New Statesman” magazine suggested the questioning centred on a request by an additional

South ,Afr> can university to have its graduates accepted. The magazine said the issue of South African medical schools had long been a contentious one within the G.M.C. It said that only one of the six universities on the “list of 22” had a mixture of black, Coloured, and white students. The university wanting to be included in the list is an all-black institution. Critics of its being given special status, including some G.M.C. members, say this would be a further major recognition of the legitimacy of apartheid in the field of medical education. Britain’s Anti-Apartheid Movement says the university specialises in training students for work in rural areas “which in other circumstances might be laudable but in South Africa means, in essence, training for Bantustans.”