UK’s General Medical Council urged to revise terminology for international medical graduates

The General Medical Council (GMC) must modify its terms relating to worldwide medical graduates (IMGs) in the UK, argues a brand-new commentary released in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (JRSM)

The existing terms utilized by the GMC stops working to incorporate the complete spectrum of medical professionals dealing with difficulties in the UK medical labor force, according to the paper’s author, Professor Mo Al-Haddad of Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow.

Especially, he states, the GMC’s meaning of IMGs ignores medical professionals from the European Economic Area (EEA), possibly omitting them from essential assistance and interventions targeted at decreasing the achievement space in between numerous groups of medical graduates.

Presently, the GMC’s meaning of IMGs refers just to physicians with main medical certifications (PMQs) from nations outside the UK and the EEA. This is because, when the UK belonged to the EEA, physicians from other EEA nations might easily practice medication in the UK without requiring to pass an equivalence test. Aside from for GMC registration functions, there is little advantage to classifying IMGs in this method.

Teacher Al-Haddad states, “I contact the GMC to alter the terms as a matter of seriousness so that the term global medical graduate consists of all medical professionals practicing in the UK and who have a PMQ from outside the UK. We require to properly report the percentage of IMGs in the medical labor force in the UK, and completely acknowledge and count the contribution of IMGs who graduate from the EEA. Most significantly, we require to remove the threat of leaving out EEA IMGs from the interventions and support that non-EEA IMGs get (or ought to get) in the UK.”