Nayeem Azim is a doctor. He’s also a refugee from Afghanistan. He describes how after re-qualifying to practice in the UK he has set up an online college to train other refugee doctors. After their first year they have helped 46 doctors to re-qualify to work in the UK, at an average cost of 5,000 UKP per head. Training a doctor from scratch costs ~ 250,000 UKP. He says:
Why have we been successful?
Doctors are people who want to work. They are incredibly productive and dedicated to helping society.
When they became refugees, they lost a great part of their identity. For them to be sitting on benefits is utterly demoralising. So when they’re given a chance to work for the good of society, they will do
[ via BBC News]
November 29th, 2002 at 02:12
It would be good if refugee doctors while retraining could help with translations at surgeries. They could talk to a group of people, saving time before they go to see a Doctor:
Guardian April 2002 Dr McAvoy in Sheffield has 3 translators, but has had to close his doors due to overdemand.
“The standard time for a planned consultation is 10minutes. With an interpretor present it takes 20. But his patients between them speak 37 languages – so if it is Turkish, Russian, Kurdish or Farsi, then they do the translation on the phone using a service provided by the Primary Care Trust, passing the receiver between them. It can easily take one and a half hours. “