Sunday, 5 December 2010

GMC decided their Fitness to Practice Hearings are in keeping with Article 6 of Human Rights Act 1998 by Dr Helen Bright


General Medical Council has decided that their adjudication processes are in keeping with Article 6 of Human Rights Act 1998 ( the right to a fair hearing). Reasons given: not many doctors appeal against their Fitness to Practice determinations.
Surely, that must be true, as there are some doctors who are having such good times in bed with their patients that they are too happy to appeal GMC decisions that allow them to do so.
On the other hand if a doctor appearing before GMC Fitness to Practice Committee is a woman who asserted her authority during the course of her work and told some male colleagues off, GMC will put" hundreds" of conditions on her medical practice to make it impossible for her to find any work, earn any money and pay lawyers to work on the appeal. So again, GMC wins as no appeals here either.
Medical defense organizations are run by doctors who fear for their own registration if they upset GMC. My experience is that they sabotage appeal requests.
MPS refused to protect women doctors who are defamed because in the words of one of their directors: "Women do not earn as much as men and are not as often in the newspapers". And when they are, MPS hides barristers advice from their membership fee paying member. Wicked.
Medical Defense Organizations can choose to drop the doctor at any stage from their books as the indemnity cover is actually discretionary.
Another reason why some people do not appeal GMC Fitness to Practice Decisions is because they kill themselves instead.
The third reason is discouragement given to doctors by depressed barristers who already know how useless the High Court in London is when it comes to appeals against the tyrannical, sexist and racist medical regulator. So, some people figured out it is just not worth the effort.
Fourthly, British law itself is incompatible with Human Rights Act 1998, so appealing to British Courts may be really silly. I wrote before about some Statutory Instruments. Now, new Statutory Instrument 2010/474 out this year further reinforces bad law. GMC FTP determinations are valid despite any defect in the appointment of any panelist. In fact, one does not even have to be appointed to sit there and judge a doctor. Any obnoxious individual holding obnoxious prejudices can get paid to sit at FTP.
Please, click here to read 2010/474 and you will notice that even wrong word found a way there. They appear to have intended to put in a word "hearing" but put "appeal" instead in Rule 7 (2). Yes, it is a big difference.
It is just GMC trying to prevent appeals against its stitch ups, but getting its pants around its ankles instead.
What a Freudian slip.
And yes, those boys at GMC think they can do it all by themselves. It sure did not take them long.

4 comments:

AL-RUBY said...

And another reason... and another reason .. and another reason !.. that is like the Courts the GMC is run by an adversarial system and not an inquisitorial system..the GMC like our Judges are not interested in the truth and the facts of the case to be proved.. but run a typical adversarial system .. this system is in itself an abuse of process as the system in our Courts being an overt abuse of process !
Is abuse of process compatible with the Human Right Act ??? it must be .. because that is what the GMC is saying !

Sarah said...

The validity of proceedings listed in this Statutory Instrument seems entirely incompatible with the HRA and potentially could be abused.

If, for instance, a panel member was in opposition to the others, Hearings could be held at times when (s)he could not attend.

This has been approved by the Privy Council which is strange in itself.

New law should be compatible with the HRA but I do not believe that these Proceedings are compatible with Article 6. Perhaps there are friends in high places!!

Anonymous said...

What i notice is there is a lot of variation in panel number from trial to trial. Some have three, some four while others have five.
The panels do not contain members of the same speciality as the doctor or members of the same sex , or same ethnicity or atleast one minority ethnic member when the doctor accused is from ethnic minority.
These inconsistencies are inexplainable in any way.

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