dr-no's blog

The German SS called it the Final Solution. The UK medical version of the SS, the General Medical Council, calls it Revalidation. Despite their very different contexts, the processes are remarkably similar.

We are drowning in number soup again.

The UK medical blogosphere is getting worked up about some numbers released last week by the Patients Association. The consensus seems to be that the numbers are a classic example of foul play by statistics. But perhaps they are not.

Dr Maurice Colon, National Lead on Revalidating Doctors reports: ~ Well, I can tell you, we are all having a spiffing time down here at Revalidation Central.

One of the more striking changes in medicine in recent years has been the increasing use of - and reliance on - numbers. Now, cosying up to numbers is all very well, as long as you understand them. Most doctors do not.

The news that Michael Jackson’s physician, Dr Conrad Murray, is to be charged with manslaughter for allegedly killing Jacko with an anaesthetic called propofol raises many questions – not least of which is why was propofol being used in the first place?

Dr Richard “It seemed like a good idea at the time” Smith, late of the BMJ, continues to blog on the BMJ website. It now appears that his former colleagues have been having a laugh at his expense by replacing his erudite words with their own tedious scribblings.

Dr Helen Bright once observed that locums are all too often asked to “swim in troubled waters”. Many locums will agree. Often the clues that the trust is in trouble can be spotted early on – provided one knows what to look for – which allows one to beat a hasty and hopefully painless retreat before the sharks come out to play.

Twenty five years ago, the General Medical Council’s Annual Retention Fee for doctors to remain on the Medical Register was £20, and the “Blue Book” – the Council’s code of professional conduct for doctors – ran to some thirty pages. Today, the same fee is £410, and the code, which is now issued in several volumes, runs to hundreds of pages.

Hierachiology – the “-ology” that studies hierarchies – was founded by Dr Laurence J Peter, who also gave his name to the eponymous Peter Principle: that, in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence.

Dr Helen Bright is an extrovert, capable consultant psychiatrist who, for lifestyle reasons, chooses to work as a locum. Or rather did, for she has now been constructively erased from the Medical Register.