In July 2008, the Chief Medical Officer’s report acknowledged the existence of racism in the NHS, which has damaged individual careers and harmed patients. Now we have licensing to practise and revalidation will be introduced over the next few years. BAPIO understands that these processes are necessary to ensure quality care and patient safety.
However, we are concerned that there is scope for abuse and discrimination and careers and lives are at stake. A large number of ethnic minority doctors and international medical graduates already fear the worst over revalidation.
Revalidation will give a small number of individuals huge power to both support doctors but to also expose incompetencies. This by its very nature needs people, who in the main would be medical directors, to act fairly and in an evidence-based manner and without consideration to matters outside professional competence.
Much work and thought is necessary to make sure this works fairly and without prejudice. Equality and diversity training must be mandatory for all individuals involved in revalidation. The framework for revalidation must be transparent and robust and decisions must be based on multiple evidences rather than on the views of a few individuals.
The GMC, as the regulator, has the responsibility to ensure there is no discrimination by its members. It must ensure it is easy for individuals to complain to it about discriminatory matters, that the threshold for investigating such complaints is not inappropriately high and demonstrate that it takes such complaints seriously and will investigate them thoroughly.
Are we confident all this will be in place?
Tags: CMO, License to practise, Revalidation
How do you propose to do that Bapio?
I would be grateful if you would kindly confirm your role in the collection of statistics for ethnicity at the GMC.
MP