US doctor Frank Trost forced out of Australia after working in the country

Brisbane Courier-Mail ^ | 9th September 2009 | Peter Michael

[naturalman1975]

A WORLD-famous US surgeon pulled out of retirement to fill in at a regional hospital has been forced to abandon Australia in a visa bungle.

Dr Frank Trost, 77, a globally recognised orthopedic surgeon, has been locked in a bitter six-month wrangle over his visa status amid new restrictions on foreign-trained doctors.

Yet, despite the dire shortage of doctors in regional hospitals, Queensland Health and the Immigration Department have refused to budge.

"I feel badly used," Dr Trost said yesterday. "If I'd not gone back to work, I'd be happily retired and still living the dream. We don't want to go. This is our home. But we have no choice."

Fellow surgeons, locals and patients are outraged at the "appalling" treatment of the specialist, who will be forced to return to the US.

.....

Dr Trost and his wife Nancy came to Australia from the US on a retirement visa in 1996 to live by the beach in Mackay. But once word got out of his international stature as a surgeon and expert in amputations, he was asked to join the understaffed Mackay Base Hospital. Then at 65, he did so, sharing his skills and knowledge, administrating his department for more than a decade after stopping surgery because of age restrictions.

Dr Trost had the added comfort of a personal letter from the then federal immigration minister reassuring him he would be allowed to go back on to his retirement visa once he finished work.

.....

He is today in his last week of work at Mackay Base Hospital after resigning in protest over a series of conditions imposed on his work. One included sitting a multiple-choice Australian Medical Council exam this month before spending two years in the wards as an intern, he said.

[naturalman1975]

The new restrictions on foreign doctors were introduced following the case of an utterly incompetent US trained Doctor, Jayant Patel, who was working in Queensland hospitals between 2003 and 2005, and who has been linked to the death of up 87 patients in that time, but largely seem to ignore the fact that Patel had been restricted and then lost his medical licence in the US before coming to Australia, and Queensland Health failed to check up on him properly - American authorities had already ruled him unfit to practice. Rather than accept responsibility for their failures, the Queensland government seems to want to try and suggest US medical training isn't generally good enough.

[ScreamingFist]

There are many, many foreign trained doctors that are unfit to practice in Western nations. Here we have a case where a Western trained doctor is required to go back to basics and prove he is eligible to practice in a country where he is not certified.....

The entire situation is bizarre.

[Shannon]

I guess they have their rules and “zero tolerance”, in other words they’re too stupid to evaluate each situation. What a bunch of idiots. It’s not like this man has to work; he’s been doing it to help them!