With more a more clinical negligence claims being filed due to out-of-hour GPs medical blunders, an investigation is to be launched. The inquest was announced after two British patients treated by a German doctor died. The issue has raised the ever growing concern on how easy it is for EU doctors to practice abroad. Under current European legislation, doctors may work within the European Union with less rigorous tests than doctors with licenses from non-EU countries. According to Niall Dickson of the British General Medical Council, this current law is dangerous, especially when language barriers exist, “There is an assumption that there is equivalence across the European Union, and we are not able to challenge, for example, whether a particular country's regulator is working effectively or not and secondly we're not able to test whether they are able to speak English.” Out-of-hours service fear The medical negligence occurred when a 70-year-old man from Cambridgeshire, complained of kidney and stomachs pain in February 2008. A German doctor treated him with two injections of diamorphine. The patient died later that evening. The coroner's inquest into his death and the death of another patient who was treated by the same GP the following day opened on Thursday, amid questions on how Britain allows foreign doctors to practice in the UK. The son of the male patient, said his death would not have happened had his father been treated by a UK-trained doctor. “[The doctor] he had no knowledge of that drug, and despite that, gave the 100 milligrams without any knowledge that that would be fatal, and 10 times the recommended dose,” he said. It was also noted that he did not have a good command of English and shockingly, admitted unfamiliarity’s with the drug he administered. Despite the growing evidence that many foreign out-of-hour GPS are unqualified; the British government responded that it has harsh systems on how such doctors can practice in the UK. However, these rules were not followed by the German doctor. Health Minister Mike O'Brien commented: “There are a large number of managers, of GPs and of other clinicians who operate in the out-of-hours service who provide a good quality service in the vast majority of cases. There are some cases where we need to ensure the rules are tightened up, and we will.” The GP was convicted in Germany last year of causing death by medical negligence but still runs a private practice for cosmetic surgery in Germany. New safety measures However, compulsory training and induction schemes for doctors who have never worked in England before are among measures being examined in a government safety review following the case. The General Medical Council is also stepping up its campaign to change rules for recognising medical qualifications across the EU. It wants doctors from Europe to face exams on their knowledge and skills before being added to the professional register in Great Britain, just like doctors from other parts of the world, but a European commission review of the rules is not planned until 2012.