I’ve got to go to a bullying and harassment course. Two and a half bloody hours. I thought the consultants’ forum on the trust intranet would be buzzing with ripe comments from disgruntled refuseniks, but no. A number of colleagues felt it was a good and necessary thing. And some of them were - wait for it - surgeons!
For God’s sake - when I sat the FRCS nearly 35 years ago, we had to do a whole module in bullying - methods; choosing a victim; deflecting the blame, that sort of thing. How times must have changed*. And anyway, I do rather resent the implication that I might be bullying our SpRs. No, as long as my tea and toast is waiting for me when I arrive in the morning, my car gets valeted once a week and they hand over their dinner money every day, the lazy little gobshites have nothing to fear from me.
Incidentally, it looks like being an interesting week for anyone who questions the GMC’s competence (i.e. anyone on the Medical Register). I see they’ve just struck Andrew Wakefield off for paying children to give blood as part of a research project for which he didn’t have the appropriate ethical clearance, and in which he had an undeclared financial interest.
Then there was the shock/horror programme on the telly about their ‘victimisation’ of Dr Myhill who was only doing her best for her patients. For those of us with a natural and, I believe, justified antipathy to the Hallam Street mafia, these cases make interesting reading. The initial reaction is to hope they get a good media kicking over the Myhill case, then you read her website and begin to wonder if they don’t have a point. Which would mean they had got it right twice in one week. I’m at an age where it’s unsettling to have your prejudices challenged in this way.
But to get back to the bullying course: one reluctant potential participant asked if our masters couldn’t make it an e-learning course, like all the other (hand-washing and bottom-wiping nonsense) training we have to pretend to absorb in order to get appraised, or revalidated, or canonised, or whatever it is we have to be in order to continue doing our jobs. But the answer was “no” - you have to be there in person apparently. And you know what that means, don’t you? Sodding role-playing. Well, I don’t do role-playing, not since I grew up, anyway (although I don’t suppose it will be a problem for the surgeons). I’m going to have to do something I haven’t done for 50 years; forge a note from my mum excusing me on the grounds of my innate diffidence and good taste.
And anyway - bullying is good for them.
*On the other hand, perhaps they haven’t. See Jerry Nelson’s latest column.
Tags: Bullying
Cor blimey! I have just spent a fascinating 20 minutes on Dr Myhill’s web site which includes the following statement :
“The two things I dislike most about the medical profession are their power to access diagnostic tests and their power to prescribe.”
How many years have I wasted …………..
Yes, I particularly like the comment re her GMC restrictions:
‘The worst is that she has lost her right to prescribe medications from the British National Formulary. There is no problem with nutritional supplements’
So no problem there, then - she can still take money off gullible punters for fairy dust, she just can’t prescribe anything that actually works.
How refreshing. Someone daring to blog about the big bastion in a manner not communicating a puppy-like fear of the Owner. Their procedures and systems are certainly not perfect, and the way they, just as an example, screen foreign medical schools of eligibility for PLAB registration seems random and haphazard at best. A panel to screen the panel is always good