GMC Legal Roulette

The General Medical Council can be called a thief. According to the Theft Act, the following definition is provided.

— (1) A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly.

I actually do not have the time to blog but I am here at about 5 am in the morning examining the concepts of theft of a doctors career by the General Medical Council. Anyone who works for the General Medical Council engages in the behavior of intentionally depriving a doctor of their livelihood.

Yesterday, a surgical junior doctor met the GMC legal team in court. They had come well prepared. No doubt Mark Shaw QC went for his £500 trip to the boys room [ plus VAT] and no doubt Lesley Morgan and Paul Hylton neatly prepared the GMC bundles, courtesy of GMC subscription fees. QC time is expensive and no one questions that. Time is money and money is time.

Apparently, the GMC's costs were about £18,000 but they were prepared to be civil and plant a large amount of £4000 plus VAT on the head of the junior doctor yesterday. Apparently, they were being kind. Of course, those of us who are seasoned GMC observers know that the GMC does not roll out Mark Shaw QC unless they are in the shit. It is Shaw who pulls them out using his debonair good looks and his dastardly charm. It is often amazing what you can do with a good Saville Row suit although I have no idea whether Shaw wears such things but he should. A good devouring of a junior doctor is done with Chianti and a Saville Row suit. He should know that by now.

I suspect that £4000 plus VAT must have felt like a trickle of kindness from Mark Shaw QC. Something he can do to a person he perceives as a beggar. Because he no doubt perceives all doctors as beggars because they beg for the return of their livelihood from him. He can stand there in all his powers and look down on us mortals. He can judge us with his own brand of justice. He can say that disclosing all complaints to every employer in the land on the doctors CV is justice. Nothing like this happens to any other profession.

As I expected, the team flattened the daylights out of the surgical junior doctor but we have some learning points from this escapade. We learned that they flatten doctors for a living, we learned that what Mark Shaw QC says, the courts believe without question, we learned that Mark Shaw QC can look upon a violation of human rights and simply walk away.

We learned that Mark Shaw QC can justify why not to take action against doctors guilty of forgery, fraud, deception, negligence and killing a small boy called Robbie Powell but he argues why a doctor who wrote intemperate emails to the Royal College of Surgeons should be left with a warning on his record. In Shaw's world, a doctor who writes intemperate emails is worth sanctioning but doctors who have killed a patient aren't worth sanctioning. Let us therefore see who Mark Shaw QC protected . Perhaps Mark Shaw QC calls that " protecting patients".

" We also found that there was some evidence that the GP's medical notes had been altered, sufficient to prosecute certain individuals for offences of forgery and perverting the course of justice. However we concluded that it was no longer in the public interest to prosecute those offences because of the passage of time and earlier CPS decisions"

" The medical evidence does suggest negligence in the treatment given by Dr Michael Williams on the 11 April. Dr Williams position is made worse by the fact he had the medical notes in front of him and had read the letter from Dr Forbes, which specifically raised the possibility of adrenal insufficiency. The contents of Dr Williams referral letter suggest he was aware after Robbie had died that he had made a mistake and should have picked up the signs of the condition. Although the decision to refer was correct, the failure to refer immediately was a bad mistake but not such as to allow us to prove manslaughter to the criminal standard. There would also be problems in proving that Dr William's negligence was a substantial cause of death because of the cumulative subsequent negligence of Drs Boladz, Hughes and Flower. We concluded that any prosecution of Dr Williams for manslaughter would fail"

"The key aspects of Dr Boladz's examination on the 15th April appear to be the fact that Robbie was too weak to walk unaided, he had been unwell for some days and was showing obvious signs of weight loss. He therefore should have made an immediate referral to hospital and there is no doubt that such a referral would have saved Robbie's life. We have concluded that Dr Boladz should have recognised signs of dehydration. From the medical reports, this appears to be the key factor in determining whether Dr Boladz should have recognised Robbie was so seriously ill and that he needed immediate hospitalisation. The medical opinions do not establish this point sufficiently, to prove that the risk of death was so obvious at this time to enable us to successfully prosecute Dr Bloladz for manslaughter. The case for manslaugher against Keigh Hughes runs into much the same difficulties. On the 16th April Robbie was closer to death and it may be presumed that the signs of dehydration would have been more apparent than they had been for Dr Boladz, The evidence suggests that Dr Hughes failure to make an emergency referral was negligent. Robbie would have survived if admitted to hospital at this point and we can therefore argue that Dr Hughes negligence was a substantial cause of death. The key issue there was whether there was a obvious risk to death that should have been recognised by any competent GP......

"There is evidential basis for saying that Dr Nicola Flower was grossly negligent in her management of Robbie's illness on 17th April. It is the case for both the 3.30pm and the 5.30pm consultations. At both times the proper course of action was an emergency referral to the hospital and there was clear evidence to suggest that the risk of Robbie dying would have been obvious to any reasonably competent general practitioner. We reached this conclusion, not by assuming that Dr Flower should have recognised Addison's disease, but because she failed to recognise a seriously ill child who needed immediate hospitalisation. Having reached this conclusion, we then considered the issue of causation. We looked to determine whether we could prove that Robbie would have survived as an emergency after either consultation. If we were able to do so then we cold establish the causal link between Dr Flower's gross negligence and Robbie's death"

Of course, Shaw QC would play with his words and tell us all that he is a lawyer and he believes in justice and he knows the law .

We are all told to apologise if anything goes wrong or even if anything doesn't go wrong. In this surgical junior doctors case, two lawyers coaxed an apology to the General Medical Council implying that matters would get better for him. Having coaxed the apology, they took their money and disappeared into the sunset. Yesterday, the only argument the General Medical Council had on justifying a warning on this doctors registration was the fact that he had apologized. So, an apology according to the GMC's legal team was an admission of so called guilt and this apology gave them the right to violate a person's Article 10 [HRA] human rights. And there we have it, that is the price of an apology.

Dr Scot Jnr was nearly taken down by his own misguided apology. Dr Shrine Boardman decided to apologise as well. Morally this may be the correct thing to do but the General Medical Council sees it as an admission of guilt. That is what the case yesterday told us all.

The argument that is haunting Mark Shaw QC at the moment is whether a complaint can be taken up without a complainant. In R v GMC Ex Parte Powell he argued that a complaint could not be taken up without a complainant. Yesterday, he appeared to argue that a complaint can be taken up in the new rules but not the old rules. Then he has a minor problem of the fact that in Pal v GMC 2004, during the old rules, a complaint was taken up without a complainant.

So let us have a look at the old rules to see if Mark Shaw QC is right.

Here is the link to the pre 2004 rules.

6.—(1) Where a complaint in writing or information in writing is received by the Registrar and it appears to him that a question arises whether conduct of a practitioner constitutes serious professional misconduct the Registrar shall submit the matter to a medical screener.

And there we have it " information in writing" is of course not necessarily a formal complaint by a complainant. Mr Shaw provides no reason as to why the old rules or the new rules should be any different :). It just is because Mark Shaw says so.

I am therefore quite amused to see which direction Mr Shaw is planning on jumping at the next case which pins him down to this point. Surely, the GMC are being consistent?! Aren't they? :) Or do they argue whatever is convenient to them at the time and hope the world does not notice.

So, the surgical junior doctors livelihood is intentionally deprived. Doctors who lied, forged, killed continue to practise medicine without a warning.

To the General Medical Council, a series of ratty emails is far more dangerous to the public than killing a patient. That was the conclusion of the case [permission to refuse a judicial review of a warning] yesterday. This is what doctors pay the GMC for.

I find this fascinating, don't you?