Problems of Language in Examinations for Foreign Psychiatrists

Extract

The National Health Hospital Service depends heavily on overseas medical graduates for staffing the junior grades. In adult psychiatry alone, at the last count on 30 September 1973, 570 out of 911 Registrars and Senior House Officers (62.6 per cent) were medical graduates who were born outside the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland (D.H.S.S. Hospital Medical Staff statistics, 1974). The majority of these are likely to be foreign graduates whose mother tongue is not English. Since psychiatry is the most language-bound branch of medicine, those training in psychiatry are likely to have special difficulties. This applies to learning the subject, to passing the examinations and to the actual practice of psychiatry.