IN MY VIEW... DOCTORS’ WATCHDOG IS TOO SOFT
‘BRUSQUE, unfriendly and indifferent’ are not what you would call ideal qualities for someone working in medicine.
Yet this is how the General Medical Council (GMC) described the manner of Dr Jane Barton, the retired GP accused of hastening the deaths of numerous patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital.
The investigation went on to call her use of painkillers on the ward ‘excessive, inappropriate and potentially hazardous’ and added that, professionally, she had ‘a worrying lack of insight’.
The panel found Dr Barton guilty of ‘serious professional misconduct’ yet, despite these major shortcomings, she wasn’t struck off.
How could that be? The job of a doctor is not defined solely by the ability to get through medical school — it is also about taking a solemn oath always to put the welfare of patients first. If a doctor is found to have deviated from this, they expect to be struck off. So why was Dr Barton spared?
I find it bewildering — but, in truth, it’s not the only GMC decision that has left me feeling that way. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the arrest of Harold Shipman — the most prolific serial killer in this country’s recorded history.
In January 2000, Shipman was found guilty of the murder of 15 of the patients under his care, though it has been established he was probably guilty of killing as many as 250.
Less well-known is that, in 1976, he had been found guilty of forging prescriptions for pethidine, a morphine-like opiate to which he was addicted (he had forged the prescriptions in the names of various patients). Despite this, after a brief period of suspension from the medical register, the GMC reinstated him and he commenced practice in 1977, working as a family doctor in Manchester.
So why did the GMC permit Shipman, a known criminal and drug addict, to enter general practice without any form of continuing supervision?
If it had done so, it is more than likely that many lives would have been spared. Yet we have heard no more about the responsibility of the GMC in this matter.
It reports directly to the Privy Council and, on occasion, this body of senior politicians does find the actions of the GMC to be flawed — it is not above some measure of scrutiny and discipline itself. I say thank goodness for that.