UK has to fly in foreign doctors to treat patients

From Daily Mail

Foreign GPs who commute to Britain:
£100-an-hour Poles and Lithuanians
fly in for shifts our doctors won't do

"The huge extent to which the NHS needs foreign doctors to treat patients out of hours is revealed today.

A third of primary care trusts are flying in GPs from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland because of a shortage of doctors in Britain willing to work in the evenings and at weekends.

The stand-ins earn up to £100 an hour, and one trust paid Polish and German doctors a total of £267,000 in a year, a Daily Mail investigation has found.

It raises fresh concerns that British patients are being treated by exhausted doctors without a perfect command of English.

Yesterday the Royal College of GPs and the General Medical Council called for a 'radical review' of out-of-hours care so that the NHS no longer has to rely on help from abroad.

The figures come months after an investigation was launched into the conduct of a German doctor after two patients died on his first shift in Britain.

Daniel Ubani had just three hours sleep."