Malta's health authorities are in talks with Britain's National Health Service so that housemanship for doctors will be recognised in the UK, in an effort to stem the exodus of new graduates abroad.

If successful, the link would do away with the need for young Maltese doctors to leave the island to follow the British foundation course in order to apply for a specialist post in the UK.

Arrangements are already underway to structure the local two-year housemanship on the same assessment lines as the foundation programme that was introduced by the British NHS in 2005, director general, health services John Cachia said.

This, he added, would be "an excellent method of benchmarking" the local programme with that in the UK.

"Exploratory contacts" have been ongoing in the past two months, and a delegation from the British health system is expected in Malta this week.

"The prospects are encouraging. Any agreement reached will build on existing systems and the excellent relationships already in place between Malta and the UK on health matters."

Last year Britain started recruiting newly graduated doctors and those who followed the foundation course in the UK were perceived to have an advantage when applying for further specialist training posts.

This increased local concern about the number of doctors leaving the island to specialise abroad. Last year 30 per cent of newly graduated doctors left Malta without ever working in the local health system.

"We aim to offer young doctors a two-year housemanship that will prepare them to successfully compete for specialisation jobs both locally and abroad," Dr Cachia said, explaining that although the collaboration aimed to avoid losing young graduates, it also wanted to ensure that they did not lose out on their right to study abroad.

"We have always lost doctors to overseas. If the decision to specialise overseas can be delayed in a mutually beneficial manner by two years, it will ensure a proper service to local patients while still offering a high-quality preparation programme for future training to our young medical graduates."

Contacted yesterday, the president of the Medical Association of Malta, Martin Balzan praised the initiative, saying that structured training was beneficial for both patients and doctors. "Anything that enhances standards is good," he said, adding that keeping newly graduated doctors in Malta to do their housemanship was preferable to losing them earlier.

He said the next step that needs to be tackled is a legal problem which sees housemanship carried out in other EU countries not recognised by the local system.