Peter Gooderham's Sheep Pen

Meanwhile at the Doctors Only Website.
OMG OMG "He has a law degree, he must be right" :)

Peter Gooderham is a doctor converted into a lawyer. Both roles should ensure that he declares his conflicts of interests when providing a talk :). Gooderham will disagree with this aspect but bias is important in this day and age. I know from my sources that he has aligned himself with PACA and also Dr Jennifer Colman. Jennifer is affectionately known as the Poisoned Dwarf and always has a position to maintain in all aspects of the world. What that position is, no one knows. As everyone is aware, Jennifer sued the GMC for a few million but ended up with nothing.

I mention Jennifer because Peter Gooderham's talk in Birmingham was rather more interesting if you observe it in detail. There are almost two slides dedicated to the issues concerning Jennifer Colman [Pre-Determination]. Some weeks ago Gooderham admitted to not advising on any Colman cases. He certainly knows of the issues in intimate detail. Gooderham has also toed the line where he has not publicly aligned himself with Jennifer Colman. I have no idea why this is nevertheless the age of chivalry is not dead because here he is in the BMJ saving Colman. On the 12th December 2004, this is what Jennifer Colman said in an email

"Gooderham has sent me the chat line from it- she is basically rubbishing Dame Janet Smith's report. I'll send you what Gooderham sent to me- but don't publish any of his stuff or mention him as his position will be ruined at Cardiff Law School in medical law and he is an excellent mole with lines of communication into many parts of the medical establishment,and I don't want to lose that connection"

Colman will no doubt consider it impertinent to publish extracts. She should though be pleased that she is not subject to the emails between her and Brian Morgan, the freelance journalist cum cyberstalker who lives in Cardiff. Brian Morgan of course is the man who feeds negative material to the media on David Southall. Oddly enough and it is an interesting coincidence, Gooderham is based in Cardiff. Perhaps Morgan and Gooderham ought to meet up for tea and discuss the influence of Scientology and Anthony Gomez at the GMC. Just an idea for a conversation piece.

The other interesting issue is Colman's over sympathy for Penny Mellor, a born again ex convict. Colman has sympathy for Mellor - for obvious reasons. She feels I should not bash Mellor on the head with her criminal record. Colman is no doubt aware of the trials and tribulations of criminal records. PACA no doubt is so starry eyed about their new found lawyer that they have given Gooderham a group hug. I always find the word "mole" from Jennifer rather interesting. If I were Brian Morgan, I would keep in touch with Jennifer Colman so that information does travel from PACA to the Mellor camp. Who cares about the safety of David Southall these days? Certainly not PACA. I think its information free for all now.

Anyway, enough of pointless gossip and discussions of trojan horses.

One wonders if he would have ever featured those slides had he not known her personally. In any case, Peter is a sucker for a sob story and we must give him credit for that. He quotes Dame Carol Black

“Regulation for me signifies any measure or intervention carried out by government, or on behalf of government, or some other statutory body, that seeks to change the behaviour of individuals or groups.” Professor Dame Carol Black, GMC Council Member, Chairman of Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, etc., etc., etc

There are problems with Gooderham's talk in that he does not define the basics for doctors or lawyers. Other resources that are vital regarding the GMC are documents such as Acting Fairly To Protect Patients. This document summarises the reasons the GMC has tilted in favour of the "patient". It also goes onto define the Public Interest. Here is the definition

"The Merrison Committee 2 said that ‘the GMC should be able to take action in relation to the registration of a doctor…in the interest of the public’, and that the public interest had ‘two closely interwoven strands: the particular need to protect the individual patient, and the collective need to maintain the confidence of the public in their doctors’3. In the context of the PCC case in 1998 concerning children’s heart surgery in Bristol the Privy Council confirmed that view, holding that the public interest included, but was not limited to, the protection of individual members of the public. Other factors were the maintenance of public confidence in the profession and declaring and upholding proper standards of conduct.4 The proposals in this document are based on the premise that the fundamental purpose of the fitness to practise procedures is to promote and safeguard the public interest, understood in these terms"

The definition of a " public interest" is vital when doctors come to defend themselves against the GMC. Gooderham again fails to mention that there is no definitive definition of Serious Professional Misconduct. There is no guidance for the initial filtering ie the Registrar and there is no vexatious policy to prevent vexatious complaints from filtering through. In essence, anyone can complain to the GMC with any bizarre allegation and the doctor would be subjected to a 6-8 months investigation. Gooderham simplifies the actual issues surrounding the initial consideration of a complaint against a doctor. He also fails to mention that the Rules of the GMC changed in 2004. The change of rules provided the Registrar with a certain amount of discretion for preliminary work. These are the 2004 rules. The rest of the rules can be found here.

Gooderham fails to mention the vital Internal Documents of the GMC. One is the Disclosure Policy Document and the other is the Investigation Manual. These can be obtained from the General Medical Council following a Freedom of Information Act request. He fails to mention that the GMC admit [Investigation Manual] to lifting media articles and commencing an investigation on the doctor. The disclosure policy document is interesting because it shows that once the complaint goes past a primary filtering stage, the entire complaint is disclosed to all and sundry - so for a junior doctor - this would be 5 years of their employment history. So if a complainant stated " This doctor is a paedophile", that allegation would essentially be disclosed to all and sundry. So, the allegation may be false but there is no gatekeeper regulations or directive to prevent this. So even if this doctor was cleared at any stage, the damaging allegations would remain on file. It is this damaging issue that both PACA and Peter Gooderham have failed to grasp. It is the principles that they have not considered in depth or the actual manner in which the GMC functions. Gooderham then moves forward to mention the case examiners. He does not mention that the case examiners actually have some guidance. This is their guidance.

No where in his talk does he then mention the realistic prospect test. This is yet another vital document for all doctors to be able to read. The leading case law on this is Henshall.

He fails to mention the failings of the GMC in ensuring there are no conflics of interests. For example - vested interests and memberships to organisations such as Scientology cannot be prevented. Workers at the GMC, committee members or panellists' application forms do not have to disclose their links to Scientology. The GMC admitted to this recently in an email to me. Julian Graves of the GMC said this

"This confirms that there is no requirement for Council members to register any links to Scientology. This guidance also applies to panellists. Additionally I have confirmed with our HR Department that they do not have any record of GMC staff registering links with Scientology"

So in summary, no one has any idea how many scientologists parade themselves at GMC Towers. This principle applies to other groups.

Gooderham fails to mention that Good Medical Practise comes in different versions from the Blue Book onwards. Doctors are often subjected to the Good Medical Practise document developed in 2006 rather than the one developed in the year when the "allegation" occurred. This is a flawed administrative process not noticed by many doctors or lawyers facing the General Medical Council.

It is very interesting that Gooderham does not mention the fact that there may well be a race relations element in the GMC's decision making process. We don't know whether this is so because the GMC cleverly has not detailed their statistics. I am also surprised that he did not mention the definitive research by Isobel Allen. She states as follows

"One of the main problems identified is that there is no commonly understood working definition of 'serious professional misconduct', through which a doctor may be disciplined or struck off the register. This has undoubtedly led to a lack of clarity among GMC members and staff on the criteria, standards and threshold to be applied in reaching a judgment on cases at the different stages of the complaints procedures.

The research also found marked differences in outcome between different GMC committees, and concluded that this lack of consistency was difficult to account for in the absence of clear reasons given for decisions. Much greater transparency had been introduced at the screening stage of the GMC procedures, but there were still inconsistencies which could not be explained"

This is still the leading research on the General Medical Council. I also quite like this article by Samanta.

Gooderham quotes a wishy washy paper from the BMJ written by Peter Wilmshurst. The most important paper was his personal view. This can be found here.

There is some discussion on the Civil Standard of Proof. Sadly, for all doctors concerned, case law from the past determined that the GMC should have always had the civil standard of proof. Indeed this was recommended by a number of cases at the Privy Council. Other regulatory bodies work on the civil standard of proof. This was discussed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in the past. Historically, we can therefore argue that the General Medical Council has always used the wrong standard of proof. The GMC will not agree to that so we now have to accept the civil standard of proof. This was a document written by Lord Lester of Blackstone Chambers. Given Isobel Allen's conclusions, we wonder if the General Medical Council even used the criminal standard of proof. Perhaps it was simply a clever set of words to provide doctors with a false sense of security. We can safely conclude that the GMC has probably always used the civil standard in varying degrees and called it the "Criminal Standard". Of course, there is no standardisation at the GMC. There is no consistency of decision making. The GMC itself admits that cases at the GMC are not persuasive. They frequently tell you " each case is considered on its own merits". In reality, their decision making is arbitrary and based on the luck of the draw. Given the findings in the Shipman Inquiry and the standard of decision making, we wonder what the true extend of human rights violations is at the GMC. No one has examined it.

Within the fightback of the Profession, Gooderham failed to mention Pal v GMC 2004. Oh, a purposeful skip over it perhaps? That is alright because I will mention it here. I know all white male medics stick together and crow about themselves - so us ethnic minorities will simply crow about our own victories because we can :). And Oh look it is on Bailli as well :). On a separate note, I would like to say that Cardiff Law School told me that this case could not be executed. It was executed and completed. The other mode of action for the profession is to challenge the GMC through the Human Rights Act 1998. It can also be done through defamation law although Peter Cater Ruck would never agree. The procedural irregularity at the GMC may break the defence of qualified privilege. I have no intention of testing this to hearing but some other clever doctor might like to try it. Nothing is ever impossible.

Defence Unions are ineffective and lethargic. They fail to deal aggressively with complaints at the start. The way to win is to accelerate and on occasion, attack is the best way of defence. I don't say this just to doctors but also to patients and their relatives. I know Gooderham has failed to mention the leading cases in GMC jurisprudence - that of Toth etc. I owe a lot to Mr Arpad Toth - he taught me how to defend myself against the GMC. The other lady is Jennifer Campbell. I say this because there are many in the public who are much better than doctors at fighting the system. Doctors tend to sit around allowing their defence union to dig large holes. When they are about to fall into said hole, they start to scream and shout.

Phil Walcock is one person who fights the GMC with logic and there are many like him. While Gooderham tilts his speech in support of doctors, we should always remember that not all doctors are innocent. There is a huge risk that those who campaign for justice at the GMC will end up protecting those who are extremely guilty. PACA is one such group who assumes innocence in all doctors. I was devastated to find that Camille Lazarro was a member of PACA. Justice Eady who is one of the judges I have a great deal of respect for stated as follows

"Mr Justice Eady criticised Dr Lazaro for "throwing objectivity and scientific rigour to the winds in a highly emotional misrepresentation of the facts."

Here is further information on this PACA member. So why is PACA supporting Lazaro? Did she follow protocols? Does PACA vett the doctors who join their group or is the doctor considered "innocent by default"?

There should now be a balance of patients and doctors rights. If the GMC is able to do that, they have performed their function. The GMC has a long journey ahead of it before it can balance the interests of doctors and patients.

This is written because I know a number of members of the public read it. It is also meant to show them that - even the worst and cleverest of enemies can be beaten if you do your research. I am not a lawyer, when I fell into problems, I had myself to rely on. I didn't cry about it, I just got on with it. These days, I can challenge any lawyer any time on any day. I may not be as eloquent as them but to aim to be the best in any war you fight is an important lesson for everyone.

Gooderham knows what the books tell him. His talk has its limitations but of course I was not present on the day so I may well be unfair to him. His failure to declare his conflicts is a huge problem. The gaps in his practical knowledge is also surprising. For me, I had hoped the slides would have been better - a little more dynamic, a little more informative to those defending doctors. Anyway, I have completed what the discussion lacked. Hopefully, in the not to distant future doctors out there [ and even patients] will be able to use the two documents together to develop their own strategy. I am a practical GMC Slayer, I do it for myself, I do it for others. and I have done it since 2003 I am the sort of person that believes that anything is possible. You just get the books out - and do it. Arpad Toth shows us that you don't need degrees or qualifications to fight the best.

Peter Gooderham is the academic with all the facts, he talks the talk and walks the walk :). He gets the books out and talks about it. He also seems to have a narrow experience of GMC cases to quote from. This is probably his main downfall. He sadly fails to mention the plight of sick doctors raised bravely by Liz Miller. Miller has done more for doctors than all of us put together.
One slide on this aspect would have been more fruitful than the space dedicated to Southall. Southall of course has more people protecting and defending him than the Pope. PACA has now become much like the Vatican.

I probably shouldn't have written this but it would be a bit silly to allow the world of medics to follow Gooderam like sheep because he has the law degrees. PACA certainly does :) but then they would probably follow anything with a degree or two no matter how much rubbish is blurted out.

Being an academic has its advantages of course - no one dares to question them because they don't know enough about the subject. Toth used to say that any subject can be mastered by applying your mind. Peter Gooderam is lucky that Arpad Toth is not here slicing his speech right down to its knees because Toth is the leading authority on GMC jurisprudence. Toth has no legal qualification but wrote the arguments for his barrister in his winning judicial review. I always believe a speech from Toth would have been more informative, balanced and entertaining. Peter still thinks like a doctor - when he should be thinking like a lawyer and teaching his colleagues to defend themselves. No doubt, I will have tons of mails moaning about how I should not " pick on Gooderam". I am sure he is man enough to defend himself. He is a lawyer afterall and I am sure any crocodile tears will be wiped off his brow by his many supporters [ yep, medical group hug coming up].

Anyway, as relicensing looms, we will see that all the doctors will be herded in to their pen by the Border Collie formally known as Finlay Scott. Some sheep never learn to defend themselves because they are too busy talking about defending themselves.

NB This was written from memory 20 minutes so if anyone spots any errors, please list it in the comments section.

Person Jennifer Campbell

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