European Doctors: Safe to Practice in UK?

The recent case of Dr. Daniel Ubani is still fresh in many people’s minds. To recap, he was a German locum GP who inadvertently injected a 70 year old patient with over ten times the safe amount of diamorphine; a strong painkiller, resulting in their death. Not so well known is the fact that he is still practicing medicine in Germany, despite the seemingly clear case of negligence. Dr Ubani avoided a manslaughter prosecution in the UK as he had already been convicted in a German court of law, finding him guilty of death by negligence and giving him a nine-month suspended sentence.

In a similar case, a German surgeon, Werner Kolb, operated on a 92 year old lady during a routine hip procedure. He had been employed by the Lincolnshire Trust as holiday cover for one of their surgeons. As European law stipulates that Medical qualifications must be accepted at face value, no further checks were performed. During the operation, he strayed into a danger area and severed an artery, causing the patient to lose over 2 litres of blood. The patient was left bed bound by the operation and subsequently died of pneumonia.

The expert witness in the inquest, Professor Angus Wallace, an orthopaedic surgeon, told the coroner that he believed that “Mr Kolb was out of his depth and unable to deal with the situation… I believe that the operation brought forward her death…This is the worst case of negligence that I have come across in my career.” (source)

Despite this condemnation, Mr Kolb refused to attend the inquest and is still working in Germany, maintaining that his actions did not contribute toward the patient’s condition.

It is not clear to the public how British doctors can be tightly regulated and subject to regular checks and revalidation, whilst European doctors can easily skirt the regulations and work as locums. The problem stems from European laws designed to increase the rights of doctors to work freely across Europe. This is a worthy aim, but can it be put ahead of a patient’s own right to safe and effective treatment?