Miller Talks Back

Elizabeth Miller is cool. She also understands what other doctors don't. This is what she wrote to me this morning while munching on her cornflakes.

"Hi Rita,

I am beginning to seriously rethink my position as to whether doctors should bother to fight the GMC at all. It may be better to walk away as soon as the GMC announces that you will have a hearing

1 - Once a hearing has been arranged, sanctions are inevitable.
2 -Once sanctions are in place, if you do not have a job or have lost your job, you become unemployable for several reasons
3 - Modern HR forms include a question as to whether you have been ever had any investigation into your practice, warnings, conditions, sanctions, suspensions. Once you have reached such a situation - ie a hearing, HR will exclude your application at the screening stage. Your application will not even be presented to the doctors making the shortlist.
4 The MDU will not indemnify you. The MPS say it is negotiable. This may not be critical if you are working for the NHS, but it means you have no means of defending yourself against further attacks from the GMC
5 Without medical indemnity, you cannot work in the private sector, either independently, through a locum agency or in a private clinic
6 Finally and most importantly, you waste years of your life fighting for justice in a setting that has the skills of Stalinist Russia, Chinese communism and The Establishment at its disposal.

Surely it is better just to walk away? and look for an alternative career at the earliest stage before the damage has been done to your career. Let the GMC try you in your absence, but if no one turned up for a hearing, how long would the gravy train last?

The multitude of panelists, expert witnesses and lawyers would find themselves out of work, as doctors refused to be involved in this circus.

Just leave and with no one to crucify, the GMC would whither on the vine? The GMC only survives because we play its game. Perhaps we should stop playing?"

I should make one comment, once the Fitness to Practise procedures commence within conduct, voluntary erasure is impossible. In addition, non payment of fees does not result in an erasure once there is a conduct hearing due. It is true that doctors such as David Jarman have hopped off the GMC Register despite having a conduct hearing due but this isn't possible now. So walking away either has to happen before GMC proceedings or after GMC proceedings are complete.

Overall, I am of the view that revalidation and appraisal is not something the GMC should be dealing with because they are malicious and incompetent. No one has to believe me on this, it is likely to happen to most people in about two years. The discovery of how incompetent the GMC is may be quite an eye opener. The ostritch effect is endemic in the medical profession with the attitude " It couldn't happen to me". This attitude has got them a regulatory body that is essentially unfit to practise but only exists due to a good public relations company and their peppered influence on leading medical journals.