Dear Daily Mail,
Enough is enough.
My senior congenital cardiac thoracic surgeon colleague DOES NOT PUT PATIENTS AT RISK when he operates on babies.
He gives them a chance to live.
I don't call him 'a Romanian',
I call him Adrian.
My colleague in the paediatric intensive care unit DOES NOT PUT PATIENTS AT RISK when he manages the multitude of problems our sick kiddies have whilst trying to anticipate everything else that could potentially go wrong.
I don't call him 'a Greek',
I call him George.
The medical doctor I referred sick children to as an A&E clinician DID NOT PUT PATIENTS AT RISK when he managed the plethora of conditions they presented with, whilst smiling warmly to make the child feel cared for and to keep the parents reassured.
I didn't call him 'a Latvian',
I called him Paul.
The doctor who showed me the intricacies and nuances of ECG heart rhythm traces when I first qualified, DID NOT PUT PATIENTS AT RISK when he treated them for their heart attacks.
I didn't call him 'that Polish one'.
I called him Pavel.
My friend who worked as an orthopaedic doctor DID NOT PUT PATIENTS AT RISK when she admitted them and assisted in mending their broken bones.
I don't call her 'a Greek',
I call her Katerina.
The anaesthetist who first taught me how to protect someone's airway and help them breathe DID NOT PUT PATIENTS AT RISK when she cared for them during surgery with minute attention to every detail of their physiology.
I didn't call her 'that French one'.
I called her Francoise.
You seek to foster division, engender distrust and cultivate fear of my friends and colleagues based on their nationality.
You do this whilst wilfully blinding others to the vital, invaluable service these people provide every damn day up and down the country and shielding the wealth of evidence regarding it from the public.
I won't allow that to happen.
My colleagues and I will not allow that to happen, because these people matter to us and we won't see them dragged through the mud.
Nor will we allow the work and value of the thousands of amazing nurses, health care workers, theatre staff or other allied healthcare professionals of EU and foreign origin to be undermined in such a callous and bigoted way.
Enough is enough.
Addendum:
As has been suggested, I can improve on this original post by stating the following;
- Doctors from the EU must demonstrate an equivalent qualification to a medical and any post graduate degree from a professional body.
- EU regulations do not prevent, and insist that the responsibility for hiring new medical professionals and vetting then appropriately is on the employer.
-As with all UK doctors, EU docs must satisfy requirements for the job advertised.
-Their language skills ARE examined and whilst there certainly are doctors (not all of them from the EU) whose skills may need improving especially if this could impact on care, there is a system in place to assess them.