The above was printed in Private Eye a few weeks ago. I should thank the dapper little medical student who asked me to write it in response to Rebecca Rooum. I actually didn't think MD or Private Eye would print it. Indeed, they nearly didn't as their lawyers sent it back for "evidence". The fact that the "evidence" had been online for 8 years clearly escaped them so I decided to appraise them. After gulping down extra Belgian chocolate, the lawyers decided to allow it into print. I should though thank Private Eye and my dealings with Phil Hammond have been pretty decent which makes me rather ashamed of what I have said about Phil in the past. Perhaps I was wrong but then again who knows. He seems nice enough anyway for a guy.
He isn't as nice as my friend Dr India though who finds himself being thrown around at GMC Towers. I had hoped that this would not happen to him as I would never want anyone to be a marked man. When the GMC touches you -you are indeed marked. They chase you around much like sniffer dogs. This isn't paranoia of course, its sheer reality. Nicholas Cooling for instance is back at GMC Towers according to his press release. For Nick, I believe he really needs to set up his tent at GMC Towers. His dealings with the GMC is probably a little like Southalls dealings with the GMC - revolving door. The GMC place their beady eye on you and minor issues become oddities.
The circumstances with Dr India is just tragic really. A excellent doctor who is essentially going to be sent to Siberia unless the blogsphere stops it. I should know Dr India because I worked with him. He is a stable, nice and decent guy currently being dragged through the mud at GMC Towers. I am horrified at the GMC psychiatrists. I am sure they live in their ivory towers and never go out. A "tiff" has become a symptom of "personality disorder". How did that happen then? When did that happen? If people are treated badly, they react - because it is human nature. The issue here though is that all patients like Dr India. He is one of those doctors that every patient likes talking to. Dr India though is the most normal person anyone could come across. For once in his whole life, he tried to assert his rights, to be treated humanely and the GMC have come down on him like a ton of bricks. Dr India isn't me. He isn't a rebel by nature, he has always played the right cards. I cannot for the life of me believe what I am seeing at present. What the hell is Blake Dobson and his team doing? Blake, the man I always thought ensured high standards, now I discover that they are all sitting there like large crocodiles by the rivers edge waiting to pounce on Dr India. Each thing he does is now scrutinised as an "abnormality". If the truth be known, Dr India is fine. He recently brought me presents from his trip to India. Dr India knows I hate gold so he brought me silver bracelets. So, I consider why the GMC are attacking a doctor that isn't a risk to patients?
I am positive this is a power trip on the GMC's part.
This makes me think about the kind of people at GMC Towers. I know for a fact that if the GMC harm him in any way, I shall plaster his case all through the internet waves until it is featured from here to India. Anything is possible as I always say.
I feel sick today regarding GMC towers. I feel sick at what they have done to many people. They ruin doctors and assasinate their emotions. So much so that existence becomes much like the living dead. They take no responsibility regarding what they do. The GMC have fought me - thats fine, I hold the GMC with contempt. They are irrelevant critters when you consider the grand scale of the universe.
Are the bloggers awake? I doubt it. Then again, we should say they aren't awake because its none of them are facing the GMC Towers. If they were facing GMC Towers, we would hear uproar. Dr India used to be a member of the Doctors Only website. He had friends and colleagues there. Where are those friends and colleagues now?
The medical profession is such an elitist, self centred profession. So judgmental of those who find themselves in troubled times.
Of course, the facts are that today it is Adam Osborne, the golden boy of the establishment who is suspended, tomorrow it will be many many doctors on many many frivolous charges. Why? Because those that paid the subscription fees allowed the GMC to become as dysfunctional as it is now. The GMC is like a uncontrolled child that has never been punished or its action. It has never learned that we live in an era of human rights not communism.
I believe the sentences below were placed online by Dr Liz Miller sometime ago and everyone simply got on with their lives. One thing is for sure, when others fall into trouble times, none of us will be there. That is because " others" were not there for their colleagues.
Relicensing is due.......... and time is ticking.
He isn't as nice as my friend Dr India though who finds himself being thrown around at GMC Towers. I had hoped that this would not happen to him as I would never want anyone to be a marked man. When the GMC touches you -you are indeed marked. They chase you around much like sniffer dogs. This isn't paranoia of course, its sheer reality. Nicholas Cooling for instance is back at GMC Towers according to his press release. For Nick, I believe he really needs to set up his tent at GMC Towers. His dealings with the GMC is probably a little like Southalls dealings with the GMC - revolving door. The GMC place their beady eye on you and minor issues become oddities.
The circumstances with Dr India is just tragic really. A excellent doctor who is essentially going to be sent to Siberia unless the blogsphere stops it. I should know Dr India because I worked with him. He is a stable, nice and decent guy currently being dragged through the mud at GMC Towers. I am horrified at the GMC psychiatrists. I am sure they live in their ivory towers and never go out. A "tiff" has become a symptom of "personality disorder". How did that happen then? When did that happen? If people are treated badly, they react - because it is human nature. The issue here though is that all patients like Dr India. He is one of those doctors that every patient likes talking to. Dr India though is the most normal person anyone could come across. For once in his whole life, he tried to assert his rights, to be treated humanely and the GMC have come down on him like a ton of bricks. Dr India isn't me. He isn't a rebel by nature, he has always played the right cards. I cannot for the life of me believe what I am seeing at present. What the hell is Blake Dobson and his team doing? Blake, the man I always thought ensured high standards, now I discover that they are all sitting there like large crocodiles by the rivers edge waiting to pounce on Dr India. Each thing he does is now scrutinised as an "abnormality". If the truth be known, Dr India is fine. He recently brought me presents from his trip to India. Dr India knows I hate gold so he brought me silver bracelets. So, I consider why the GMC are attacking a doctor that isn't a risk to patients?
I am positive this is a power trip on the GMC's part.
This makes me think about the kind of people at GMC Towers. I know for a fact that if the GMC harm him in any way, I shall plaster his case all through the internet waves until it is featured from here to India. Anything is possible as I always say.
I feel sick today regarding GMC towers. I feel sick at what they have done to many people. They ruin doctors and assasinate their emotions. So much so that existence becomes much like the living dead. They take no responsibility regarding what they do. The GMC have fought me - thats fine, I hold the GMC with contempt. They are irrelevant critters when you consider the grand scale of the universe.
Are the bloggers awake? I doubt it. Then again, we should say they aren't awake because its none of them are facing the GMC Towers. If they were facing GMC Towers, we would hear uproar. Dr India used to be a member of the Doctors Only website. He had friends and colleagues there. Where are those friends and colleagues now?
The medical profession is such an elitist, self centred profession. So judgmental of those who find themselves in troubled times.
Of course, the facts are that today it is Adam Osborne, the golden boy of the establishment who is suspended, tomorrow it will be many many doctors on many many frivolous charges. Why? Because those that paid the subscription fees allowed the GMC to become as dysfunctional as it is now. The GMC is like a uncontrolled child that has never been punished or its action. It has never learned that we live in an era of human rights not communism.
I believe the sentences below were placed online by Dr Liz Miller sometime ago and everyone simply got on with their lives. One thing is for sure, when others fall into trouble times, none of us will be there. That is because " others" were not there for their colleagues.
Relicensing is due.......... and time is ticking.
Just takes one minute for the fortune of a doctor to turn sour
5 comments:
and I added a second verse
They came first for the sick doctors - but you are healthy
Then they came for the doctor caught drinking - but you don't drink
Then they came for the depressed doctors - but you don't have depression
Then they came for the whistleblowers - but you don't have secrets
Then they came for the doctors who stuck up for what they believed in and suspended them - but you are flexible and can fit in
Then they came for the doctors who they said were not maintaining High Professional Standards - but you always submit an audit
Then they came for you - but by then, there was no one left to speak up
Dr Liz,
Your grasp of the GMC's behaviour is masterly. Rationality, fairness, open mindedness and all the other traits that go to make up a rational human being are totally absent in their functionaries. They have little understanding of the profession they are supposed to regulate, and the slight understanding that they have been unable to avoid acquiring is subsumed by the heady, intoxicating aroma of power.
To put it another way, the GMC is staffed by power crazed maniacs with an inflated view of their tin pot body's importance. When once a doctor has come to their attention, they are, as the OP said, marked for life. No matter that the original complaint was frivolous, or that it was ultimately rejected, or that it was made vexatiously by someone with an axe to grind who's grip on reality is even more tenuous than the GMC's.
These things matter not to them, any more than they care that those they stigmatise with futile, pointless investigations into allegations that are patently balderdash are tainted for life by their unwholesome touch. Naturally, this is a touch irksome for those whose careers are destroyed in the name of GMC supremacy, but what can they do? Their options are threefold - they can hide under duvets and hope the GMC will go away (comforting, but not usually effective), or they can fight the Evil Empire through the courts.
With time, effort and expense this can be effective. It's possible to give the GMC a bloody nose, to publicise their failings for all to see, to humiliate them, expose their shoddy standards and reveal the double dealing that goes on within its ranks. It's been done before, and no doubt will be done again.
But, although you can win a battle, and maybe an entire campaign, you can never win the war. The GMC nods towards the judicial system, but then goes on about its business in its own sweet way. Little known rulings against them are brushed under the carpet, forcing litigants to go prospecting for precedents like a miner panning for gold amongst dusty, unreported cases. Where a case or statute is so well reported that even the GMC can't ignore it, its meaning is subjected to the gymnastics of interpretation until the GMC arrives at a meaning, no matter how bizarre, that allows it to do what it wants to do. And that is the point: the GMC does its own thing, and always will. Those it has marked will never be free of its attentions, no matter how well and hard they fight for their rights.
Fortunately, there is a third way, a way that will prevent the GMC's constant, intrusive intervention into innocent lives and careers. They will never come for those brave enough to take this path - and, let's face it, sooner or later, they come for everyone else - and it's remarkably simple to do.
The first step is for doctors to realise that they cannot win in the long run. I know, it's a big thing to take in. Persecution from the GMC tends to make docs annoyed, and their instinct is to fight back, clear their name etc.
And that's fine if they have the resources to do it. By all means, they should clear their name, prove their point, although I have no idea who they think is interested in their name or their point. But they should never, ever think they've won. All they have achieved is a deferment of the GMC's intervention into their life, and, in revealing the GMC's inadequacies in a court of law, they have riled them. Next time, the GMC will be out for their professional blood!
The longer they remain a victim-in-waiting, the more opportunity the GMC has to find something that can be talked up into a "concern" that falls within its remit. Do doctors really want to spend their professional life looking over their shoulder, double and triple checking their work for something - anything - that can be twisted into a "concern"? Remember, the GMC are not reasonable, they do not care whether a doctor's work is good enough, only that they can make use of it.
I wouldn't live like that under any circumstances, and certainly not for the paltry salaries earned in medicine, so why should anyone else? It is time for doctors to abandon their victim mentality, give up their fight righteous though it is, and realise that there is a wide, wide world outside the medical profession.
The money's good, the freedom to do and say pretty much as they please is better, and best of all they don't need a certificate, licence or registration to participate. Sure, doctors worked hard to qualify, and their desire to treat their fellow men and women does them credit, but is it really worth the hassle and heartache of having the GMC paw through their lives for nothing?
Perhaps, for those doctors who have yet to face the GMC, it might be, although their turn will surely come. For the rest, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee. Flip a finger at the GMC, resign your registration and stride on into a brave new world that the rest of us have been enjoying all our lives - you won't regret it!
Hear Hear to Anonymous
Hi Anonymous,
I have talked to too many doctors on the brink of suicide because of the GMC, not to take what you say seriously.
It is vital for the doctor's health that they understand there is a world outside the GMC, which is normal. The NHS resembles a world described within The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. Mr Catto has too much in common with Captain Queeg for any of us to feel safe for long.
04 December 2008 10:48
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