I seem to recall using the words “just when you thought the GMC couldn’t sink any lower” in one of these blogs some time ago. Well, here we go again…
Concerned that they don’t already have enough sticks to beat us with, they have now launched an exercise in which they seem to be trawling the public to come up with even more ways in which doctors can be held to account - this time for their private beliefs and behaviour.
Sol Mead, chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges’ Patient Liaison Group tells us: “I would be unhappy with a doctor supporting a racist organisation, advocating religious fundamentalism, or being part of an organisation promoting conflict.”
Well thanks, Sol, but it’s actually none of your business what I do or don’t believe, nor is it my job to make you happy. For what it’s worth, I’m an atheist and yield to no-one in my disregard for religious fundamentalists of any stripe, but my GP’s beliefs are no concern of mine unless they have a negative impact on the quality of treatment I am offered, in which case sanctions already exist to deal with the problem.
By the same token, it should be no concern of yours if I sympathised with the BNP*, and as for “organisations promoting conflict”, would that include membership of Unison? You see, it’s difficult to know where to draw the line, isn’t it, so it’s probably best to keep your unhappiness to yourself.
In fact, Sol, it wouldn’t even matter if I were a rural GP with ovinophilic tendencies, as long as I was careful about personal hygiene and didn’t bring my sheep du jour into the surgery with me.
Reaction on medical forums has been predictably hostile. Doctors are getting pretty fed up with the GMC acting as agents provocateurs, stirring up the public into a froth of indignation concerning the potential proclivities of their medical attendants. Fortunately, they are asking us to respond to the exercise, and many of us have taken the opportunity to do so. Some of those responses have been couched in terms which would doubtless result in more unhappiness for Sol, but that simply reflects the degree of discontent with the GMC expressed by most doctors that I speak to.
Of course, I acknowledge that doctors still (just) occupy a position of trust in society, and despite the attempts of politicians to turn us into wage slaves we are still a professional group with an obligation to act professionally. In our public behaviour, which these days includes anything we say on Twitter, Facebook or blogs like this one, we need to avoid comment that would, to use that slightly pompous phrase, bring the profession into disrepute. That’s very different from saying that my private behaviour and beliefs should be the concern of the GMC or anyone else.
* I don’t - my tattoo/teeth ratio is <1
Tags: GMC
We could do something about it you know. All it would take would be a little backbone, organisation and unity.
http://vulpesmax.blogspot.com/2011/08/today-revalidation-tomorrow.html
Quite right Zorro, but we all know that’s not going to happen, don’t we?
I’ve got to agree with Dr Zorro. Why do you put up with the GMC?
When are we going to see a properly accountable organisation? Using a charity that is basically accountable only to itself just isn’t acceptable now - if it ever was.
“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Doctor Party?”
I actually read this GMC exercise as being a way for he GMC to move away from being seen to be concerned with doctor’s moral behaviour. Most people judge doctors on how they find them in consultations/hospital wards.
But Sol Mead is entitled to his view. The question is should we facilitate that view? And should the NHS support choice over choice of practitioner based on religious views etc? That would seem to be a nonsense.
I feel I have a right to express my political views- particularly with regards to the policies that affect health. It may almost be considered a duty to be a patient advocate.
I think the British government could be considered “an organisation which promotes conflict”.
“I would be unhappy with a doctor supporting a racist organisation, advocating religious fundamentalism, or being part of an organisation promoting conflict.”
Quite. So would I. And I would unhappy with a patient supporting them too. But I would not let that affect my relationship with the patient, nor the care that I provide. I cannot see why the reverse is so apparently difficult.
Thank you for an interesting article. I go away with steam in my ears…
Anyone read 1984 or Animal Farm
Could someone please define “religious fundamentalism” and “being part of an organisation promoting conflict”.
Am I just being paranoid or am I, as a self-outed, deeply committed, protestant, evangelical Christian being targeted in an unpleasant hostile way by this GMC representative?
Our use of words is very important!
Regarding religious fundamentalism, I can think of one particularly muscular religion’s fundamentalism that the GMC would be too scared to regulate against. When someone from the public service says “religious fundamentalism”, they usually only mean that religion indigenous to the West.
Am I just being paranoid?
No Tom, you’re not. As you know, we differ re religion, but I’m quite clear in my own mind that your beliefs are none of the GMC’s (or patients’) business.
I hope you’ll add a comment on the GMC’s feedback and Facebook pages.
Religious fundamentalism? More like some GP’s self-identification with a Supreme Being. Too many doctors regard patients as an annoying addition to a condition with no right to participate in decisions about their treatment. You can be what ever you want - sheep-lover, evangelical atheist, BNP supporter or Flat Earther - but I do not think that your religious or political views should affect my treatment and sometimes I think they do. If patients hold views that affect your ability to treat them, then you have a right to challenge that as well; indeed the courts allow you to do so, but a patient’s recourse is limited to complaining to the GMC.
Patient A, I disagree with your statement that you have only one recourse, to complain to the GMC. You have the right to de-register and find a different GP, or to ask for a second opinion when you are in hospital. You need not feel constrained by any beliefs you think your doctor is espousing. Complaining to the GMC on the basis that you don’t like the beliefs that you perceive a doctor to hold is a big step to take, that can have huge repercussions on a doctor’s reputation and livelihood. And you might have mis-perceived what you thought the doctors beliefs were….
I absolutely agree with you patient A (except with the bit about GPs having a god complex - all the ones I know are only too aware of their fallibility). In fact that was my point - it would be a case for the GMC if my beliefs affect the way I treat patients, and sanctions are already in place to deal with that. The fact that I hold those beliefs is not.
Thanks for this amusing response to serious problem with GMC and perhaps other regulatory bodies. I am a member of a group encouraging conflict if you believe some of the media. Iam Jewish. The nonsense from GMC ought to be blocked before folks from several groups are prevented rrom practising. Shame on GMC for giving this issue legitimacy.
Sometimes I have a look at the fitness to practice hearings repots on the GMC website. Very scary especially now that they only need the civil standard of proof rather than the criminal one of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Here are a few examples tha come to mind of what gets a doctor dragged in front of a fitness to practice hearing with a potential loss of liveliehood and reputation. A pathologist who “allowed a backlog to build up” when he wasn’t given the resources to do his job properly. Another doctor “Turning up late” on several occasions to a private hospital clinic. ” Many cases where it seems that non-medical staff clearly didn’t like the doctor and said that he/she was “rude and abrupt” etc etc.
And who is to decide exactly which organisations are racist, fundamentalist or conflict promoting - could it be Sol Mead? Why is Sol Mead’s opinion to be preferred to mine - I might come up with a very different list of organisations that I consider naughty. possibly including some that are close to Sol Mead’s heart. There is a fair consensus regarding what type of behaviour is or is not acceptable in a doctor. The GMC should stick to that without seeking to make windows into people’s souls.
So, if doctors are to be scrutinised for “behaviour” that the general public will not be scrutinised for, does that make us second class citizens?
If so, is that not an infirngement of our Human Rights? Way to go GMC!
To go back to Dr Zorro’s call fro ‘concerted action’ to try to get the GMC to see sense. Back in the 1960s many doctors threatened to withhold their subscriptions; it brought about a rapid restructuring of the GMC!
Retired Orthopod
I live in Northern Ireland. Surely that means that regardless of if Protestant or Catholic, I’m in a ‘group that promotes conflict’ …
Also, religious fundamentalism means different things to different people. In Christianity a fundamentalist theology is one who believes the Bible to be completely literal in everything, with there being no Big Bang or Evolution, but being Adam and Eve through ‘in the beginning was the word’. How that affects their ability to be a good Doctor I’ve no idea. I’m pretty sure fruit will still be recommended by a fundamentalist GP regardless of whether or not they believe in the original Adam and Eve story of the forbidden fruit and the fall of man.
If some Doctor refuses to treat a patient because they are Muslim for fear they may bring a bomb into their clinic, or wears a white hood to work every day while refusing to treat black people, then that is a completely different issue that always shouldn’t be acceptable, but this nonsense the GMC are proposing is completely different and pointless.
Basically, if a doctor is willing to be a conscientious doctor (sometimes having religious beliefs helps here) then who cares which faith he believes in or how strongly he believes in it.