Posts tagged with General Medical Council

This week’s episode of Dr Who showed early promise, with khaki tea-making squaddie daleks, complete with Union Jack logos, but started to unravel the moment Ian McNeice started impersonating Robbie Coltrane, instead of playing Churchill, and descended into farce when the Lego-inspired bootylicious make-over daleks arrived. There was but one consolation: Bill Patterson, late of Sea of Souls, was finally revealed, as has long been suspected, as an alien.

The GMC, now that it has adopted dalek methodology to manufacture Tomorrow’s Doctors, has no doubt installed Pattersons in every medical school. The fruits of these alien endeavours are already abroad on our wards and in our surgeries; but in amongst the robodocs, there are some who lack dalek DNA, and who have retained their natural and human curiosity. One such doctor is a young GP, who blogs as the Pondering Practitioner.

The origins of the phrase ‘balls-up’ are obscure. Some say that it arises from an awkward sexual encounter, but Dr No prefers a nautical origin. A vessel aground can be said after a fashion to be anchored, in that it is attached to the sea bed; and it is also unable to manoeuvre, or ‘not under command’, as the rules have it. A vessel at anchor carries one black ball, a vessel not under command two black balls, and thus a vessel that has run aground and is in trouble carries three black balls, a situation commonly and naturally referred to as a complete balls-up.

The Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, quango to the quangos, has a logo featuring not three but nine balls suspended in mid-air. It is an inspired image for a quango that not only lacks balls in the right place, but has also shown itself capable of repeated balls-up after balls-up, most recently in its eye-wateringly off-the-wall review of the GMC decision to allow the Diamorphine Queen to remain on the medical register, with only trivial and time-limited conditions on her practice.

Medium shot of Kemp standing outside GMC Towers.

KEMP (to camera): I’m on my way to meet a gang that has been regularly mixed up in spurious allegations, career assassination, perjury and perverting the course of justice. A truly notorious gang who have been terrorising innocent doctors for more than 150 years, while at the same time always looking after their own. A gang so fearsome in its reputation that its victims refer to it only by its initials. It is the gang simply known as (dramatic pause) The GMC.

The Barton case may well come to be remembered as the one in which the General Medical Council lit the fuse of its own destruction. But the fuse that has been lit is not the one that appears to have been lit.

Unlike the Gosport relatives of Barton’s victims, and the multitude of commentators on the web, and in the press, Dr No does not think that GMC stands for ‘Gross Medical Cover-up’. He does not think this is a simple case of a profession looking after its own.

Sure, there are doctors involved. But this is not about doctors protecting doctors. It is something infinitely more troubling. It is The Establishment looking after The Establishment.

Language, they tell us on Radio 4’s ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ is constantly evolving. If Clue should ever find itself down Gosport-way, it would find that ‘Going for a Burton’ - the WW2 euphemism for taking a shufti – has evolved into ‘Going for a Barton’ – meaning admission to the town’s War Memorial Hospital, and subsequent death while under the care of the visiting Diamorphine Queen, Dr Jane Barton.

The ongoing story of the Diamorphine Queen has been well covered by Rita Pal and others, including affected relatives. At its heart, it is one of a unfettered doctor initiating a zealous programme of ‘anticipatory prescribing’ of opiates and other powerful sedatives to patients, whether they needed the drugs or not. The disinhibitory effect of this cavalier prescribing led inexorably to unnecessary deaths. No one knows for certain how many, but the figure runs to tens of not hundreds of affected patients.

There are those who say that the Isle of Wight is one big Departure Lounge in the sea, an Island of Biddies and Gilberts waiting for their Final Flight. As it happens, Dr No knows the Island well. It certainly has more than its fair share of Departure Lounges, but it is also a very beautiful Island. Dr No has spent many a happy day savouring its special blend of peace and tranquillity.

Some time ago, Rita Pal, fancying herself a cushy number, took up a medical SHO post at the Island’s main hospital. Needless to say, all those Biddies and Gilberts meant not less but more medical work. She uses the occasion to remind us that not all GPs are paragons of virtue. Some are dreadful. She tells a gruesome tale of not four but five Horsemen of the Apocalypse, masquerading as GPs, who helped one Island Gilbert on his way.

There is a curse, some say of ancient Chinese origin, which runs: ‘May you live in interesting times’. It seems the interesting times are already upon us. There is mayhem and mischief abroad. A long chill shadow has settled on our profession; and in the gloom that lies beyond, unsettling forces are at work. We shall face, in the months ahead, renewed and ferocious attacks, and on the outcome the future of our profession will depend. We are about to enter the year of living dangerously.

“At that moment in time, a human error occurred…” intoned Count Rubin on yesterday’s Today programme. Uttered as it was with an air of omniscient mastery, it seemed some great catastrophe, like a jumbo jet crash, had occurred. The truth turned out to be rather more commonplace: a study had revealed that nearly one in ten prescriptions written by hospital doctors had been found to be wrong.

Further evidence has emerged that there are kangaroos loose in the General Medical Council’s top paddock.

Since the General Medical Council hopped into bed with the Department of Health earlier this year, we have seen surprisingly little in the way of overt matrimonial activity. It does appear, however, that there has much foreplay going on under the duvet, and the happy couple are moving ever nearer to that orgy of wanton destruction that will soon be on us – the orgy of enhanced professional regulation for doctors.