Colleges raise alarm over effect of EU legislation on UK healthcare

Abstract

“Urgent action” is needed on rules about testing the language competence of doctors from the EU who wish to work in the United Kingdom and on the effect of the European Working Time Directive (EWTD) on junior doctor training, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians have said. Writing in a letter to the Daily Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/9008920/Patients-at-risk.html), Norman Williams, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Richard Thompson, president of the Royal College of Physicians, have called for European Commission regulations on testing the language skills of migrating European doctors to be strengthened. They also call for flexibility in how the on call time and compensatory rest elements of the EWTD are applied to trainees so as to allow …