Catto Scott Power

Yesterday's Doctors

I have merged the name of Professor Catto with that of Finlay Scott. This is because Finlay Scott drives Professor Catto. It is called control. Catto is actually a good guy but it is often extremely difficult to function in a environment where Finlay's teeth are there ready to snap at him. Rumour has it that Finlay sharpens his teeth every day. My internal sources at the General Medical Council tell me this. Then my internal sources at the Dark Tower tell me many things about the General Medical Council including their overt hatred of me :).

Today, the excellent Liz Miller pointed me to her post. Miller had gone to Tomorrows Doctors . This was a consultation held by the Dark Tower. I was invited but as a matter of protest, I refuse to set foot into GMC Towers. I have my reasons for this. In my view, no organisation who ends the lives and livelihoods of so many doctors deserve to be visited. I gave my suggestions for Tomorrows Doctors via email. I also told them if they didn't value my contributions then they could take me off the mailing list. The GMC still have me on their mailing list. My view on Tomorrows Doctors is this - we need to train our new doctors for practical medicine not sissy medicine. By sissy medicine - I mean intellectual discussion and having no idea about how to deal with patients.

Miller does a hilarious review of her view from the hill. This is what she says

"Mr Catto presided over a Day of Consultation, Introspection and Self-congratulation from the General Medical Council discussing Tomorrow’s Doctors. He managed to orchestrate a full days navel gazing, with one lay speaker and without a single mention of Tomorrow’s Patient. Apart from a couple of token medical students it was a day out with the over-60’s branch of Saga’s Scottish physicians. Not a surgeon in sight! Rather like Tomorrow’s World running a programme on Stone Age Britain, Mr Catto told us what he and his cronies thought about Tomorrow’s Doctors, and let us comment on his ideas. All boxes were ticked"

Well, this is what I don't understand, why do the GMC have to congratulate themselves. It should be the other way around, people should be congratulating them. If there are no congratulations then the GMC must be doing something wrong. Well, we know they are doing something wrong.

Miller then goes onto make a very valid point

"Tomorrow’s Doctors are employees of the State and governed and managed by the NHS. They will know no other life. Technicians and public servants trained to work in the NHS with no jobs and no mercy for dissenters in a world where your doctor places the needs of the State above those of private individuals. The doctor acts as henchman, reporting dissident colleagues and disobedient patients in equal measure.

Tomorrow’s Doctors will treat patients according to Good Medical Practice. Good Medical Practice is the GMC’s version of Standard English Medical Practice. It may be a key document, but it is key to the Soma intoxicated chemical future of Huxley’s Brave New World"

By doing this, the profession is being cloned. No differences of opinion, no different people, no deviation from the normal will be accepted. The sad fact of the world is that everyone is different. I am positive that the General Medical Council wants to modernise but is advised by dinosaurs who have no idea about modern medicine, young doctors or the public.

Liz then makes a fascinating observation

"Mr Catto will be remembered for peacefully transforming a profession from imperfect autonomous medical practitioners to docile State Employees working for a Monopoly Employer. He has abolished GMC elections, overseen reorganisation of the National Health Service, given the Nation’s medical records to the government and handed over 150 years of independence to the first person who offered him a knighthood. He could do this because, like Anurin Bevan before him, he stuffed the doctors’ mouths with gold. UK doctors and GPs are the best paid in Europe and with some US exceptions, in the world".

Now, you have to sit silently and read that then you discover that Liz is actually quite right. Of course, a monopoly is illegal but then Bill Gates knows that. What I found hilarious was this sentence

"There was one light-hearted moment before Mr Catto fessed up to his big secret. He let out his concerns about the impact of the Internet and the blogocracy. (Well done Dr Rita Pal!)"

Poor Prof Catto. I know, I accept that the reason he is bald is because he worries that a few doctors and patients have given the GMC a run for their money. And it is probably a great shame that the PR machine cannot control us but then they have to understand that we are all the product of and opposite reaction to their behaviour. We should have all been dead after the GMC's feelers but we aren't dead. We are all alive, stronger, well and out in force.

The GMC's problem then becomes this, what do they do with the people they themselves have created. The GMC has no solution for this phenomena.

I say that because strength comes from suffering and trauma until one day you fear nothing. I say that to Dr India as well. I call it training by the GMC. After you have fought the GMC and won, no one else is a threat. I think Dr India should understand this acutely because Dr India is going to win. Lately, he told me that Christopher Kelly, the rogue GMC assessor was taken off his case. The GMC did not force him to see Kelly again. For anyone that is one step for mankind. Kelly can go back to what he does best, multiplying.

The trauma caused by the GMC teaches you self development, it teaches you to be tough, it teaches you to be self disciplined and it teaches you to be better than them. Facing the GMC engages your survival instincts like no other organisation. The GMC is a bit like being in a mental gym. You either survive it or you die. Dying isn't a option so you take the other option.

If the GMC are worried about the internet, or worried about what we all write. The GMC should understand that I as former doctor do not appreciate the manhandling of my friends and colleagues. While they cannot speak out, I speak out for them. I speak out because there has to be a historical recording of the violations of human rights and civil liberties by this organisation. Finlay Scott should be tried for human rights violations and one day hopefully a group of doctors well get together, get a class action going and shut the GMC down.

If all the doctors investigated the GMC could place their experiences anonymously online, the GMC would be out of business in 1 year.