The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7444 p334
24 March 2007

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EU professional regulation needs uniform approach

Professional regulation must be a core issue in European health strategy, the European Commission has been told.

In a response (PDF 80K) to a commission consultation on future health strategy, the Alliance of UK Health Regulators on Europe (AURE) says that safe, high quality health care depends on regulators being able to confirm the competence, fitness to practise and safety of health professionals.

This means that mechanisms need to be in place to ensure that those who are not fit to practise cannot make use of EU rights of free movement to evade regulatory control by moving from one country to another. To achieve this, information on registration, professional indemnity provision, complaints procedures, professional standards and scope of practice need to be accessible throughout the EU, AURE says.

The alliance calls for European legislation to impose a legal duty on regulators to exchange registration and disciplinary information and to act on it. However, it warns that regulation is best done in the context of local or national needs and there should be no European codes of practice or professional registers.

But the alliance accedes that there are common principles, particularly related to standards and ethics, that could be embedded in national standards and codes of practice and which could benefit from European-level facilitation.

AURE also calls for the European legal prohibition on regulators requiring potential registrants to pass a language test before registration to be dropped.

“It is vital that all health professionals are able to communicate effectively with their patients, fellow professionals and within the wider health care system,” the response says. “AURE has consistently pointed out the risk to patient safety that inadequate communications skills, including language competency, presents.”