Discussion point: Postgraduate medical training & hospital quality
Are the staff in a hospital up to scratch ?
Many hospitals actively engaged in medical tourism make much of the fact that their staff have received training in countries such as the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany etc.
For example, Bumrungrad International Hospital, a Thai hospital with major medical tourism interests, specifically alludes in their own web site to the British and American trained medical staff (among others) on their staff and expresses this as a virtue (see http://www.bumrungrad.com/Overseas-Medical-Care/Medical-Services/Meet-Our-Doctors.aspx ).
There are good reasons for such organisations engaging in this practice. The training of a postgraduate doctor to an adequate standard is a long and arduous process, but it is vital to recognise that the safety of the patient is highly dependent upon how well trained the doctor looking after them actually is. It is also vital that such a doctor is actively engaged in maintaining and improving his or her knowledge and skill base, is practicing in a caring, ethical and appropriate fashion, and is able to communicate effectively with their patients, with or without an interpreter present.
Accordingly, postgraduate training which involves doctors engaging in well-structured training schemes leading towards their taking high-quality examinations such as the MRCP(UK), the MRCS(UK) and the American Board examinations, is one way in which a doctor's quality can best be assured. Credibility is everything - one useful example is the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (see http://www.rcpsg.ac.uk/ ), a not-for-profit organisation which is world-reknowned and has an enormously high reputation within the world of healthcare and medicine. The RCPSGlasgow has access to a great fund of resources of medical talent to support it in its endeavours, and accordingly any health practitioner able to successfully pass the postgraduate exams that it conducts within the fields of medicine, dentistry, and surgery has already clearly reached a high standard.
However, once qualifications are achieved, those high standards reached need to be maintained throughout the professional life of a doctor or a dentist, and this is where CPD (continuing professional development) comes in, and this is of course equally vital.
Surveying and pronouncing upon the adequacy of postgraduate medical training and continuous professional development are, rightly, within the province of international hospital accreditation, as adequacy within this area is clearly a vital marker of a hospital's quality or otherwise.
A good hospital will welcome all and any of its doctors being openly interviewed by an independent accreditation group, and will work hard to keep up both its standards and the standards of its doctors.
At least, that is what we think. What do you think ?