Doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers who have been convicted of sex crimes can easily continue working in the Dutch healthcare system, the AD reports on Wednesday.

The paper says hospitals are failing to ask staff to get a government-backed ‘certificate of good behaviour’ which is supposed to protect vulnerable people, such as hospital patients. The AD’s research shows only 25% of healthcare workers who changed jobs last year had to show this certificate.
Reacting to the claim, the hospitals association says it does not think the certificate is necessary. ‘If someone is not ok, that should become apparent during their training,’ spokeswoman Marije Hulsbosch told the paper. ‘And in this sector we believe in trust’.
Among the cases the paper highlights is that of a doctor convicted of three rapes and abusing his daughter. The man is now running a medical centre for men with sexual problems, the AD says.
In another case, a doctor in Rijswijk was sentenced to six months in jail for abusing 10 children under the age of 11. It was his second conviction.
‘You must never put these people back in the same job where they went wrong once,’ Sjef van Gennip of the probation service Reclassering Nederland told the paper. ‘The certificate should always be required when you are working with vulnerable people. It is not foolproof, but it does help weed out troublemakers.’