Medical Recruiters welcome aims of White Paper on the regulation of doctors

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), the representative body for the UK recruitment industry with a dedicated sector group for locum doctor agencies, has welcomed the aims of the Governmentís White Paper on the regulation of doctors.

Patient safety is an absolute priority and new measures for monitoring the performance of doctors must take into account the specific situation of locum doctors often working in different sites on a succession of short postings.

Responding to the proposals in the White Paper Kim Marie Freeston, Chair of the REC Medical Sector Group, says: ìLocum doctors and the agencies that supply them have a crucial role to play in helping the NHS to meet its resourcing needs.

ìAs a result, it is essential to ensure that effective monitoring procedures are in place for locum doctors as well as for permanent staff. Practical difficulties exist for the revalidation of locum doctors but the White Paper proposals will provide an opportunity for finding a workable solutionî.

Existing regulations and Industry Codes of Practice for locum agencies already provide safeguards in terms of patient safety and performance evaluation.

However, the feedback from locum agencies is that departmental heads with NHS Trusts are often reluctant or unable to make the effort of completing and returning regular monitoring reports for locum staff. It is crucial to ensure that measures are put in place to address this.

Commenting on the proposals in the White Paper, REC Director of External Relations Tom Hadley says: ìRecruitment professionals in the medical sector place thousands of doctors into key posts each year. Patient safety is an absolute priority and recruitment professionals already play a crucial role is ensuring that all the necessary vetting procedures and data checks take place.

ìAs part of this focus on safe recruitment, agencies would support measures to enhance performance monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for locum staffî.