Implementation of fitness to practise processes "blinding" the ethnicity or country of qualification of doctors is not feasible.
The most relevant indicator for the patients was "qualification of doctors", and for the physicians "volume of specified surgical procedures".
Especially the qualification of doctors and nurses and indicators assessing patient satisfaction seemed to be relevant for choosing a hospital.
The indicators are ranked according to the mean relevance ratings of the patient group, showing the highest ranking indicator ("qualification of doctors") at the top of the list.
However, while the patients ranked the indicators "qualification of doctors", "kindness of staff" and "patient satisfaction" in the 1st to 3rd positions, these indicators received the 6th, 7th and 5th rank respectively, by the group of physicians.
Village doctors, called "barefoot doctors" before 1985, are those who have not obtained the qualifications of licensed doctors or licensed assistant doctors, registered at a county health authority, and engaged in prevention, health care, and general medical services in the village clinics.
A weakness of this sampling source was that it was not possible to determine the qualifications of the doctors regarded as 'family doctors'.
When Liam Fox, the Conservatives' health spokesman, questioned the qualifications of foreign doctors in Britain, was this, as Mr Blair also said, just some coded bigotry?Bagehot took these questions with him to Bournemouth.
However, the professional qualifications of family doctors were to some extent criticized.
