Patients can trust their doctors, says BMA

Patients can and do still trust their doctors, says the British Medical Association (BMA) on the day the fifth report of the Shipman Inquiry is published.

The BMA said cumulative changes to the way doctors work, introduced since the conviction of Harold Shipman, justified the retention of professionally led regulation.

The Chairman of the BMA, James Johnson, said: "Even in the immediate aftermath of Shipman's trial, when everyone in the country was aware of the horrors he inflicted, a MORI poll showed people trusted their doctors more than any other profession. No one is complacent, we recognise that the medical profession has to demonstrate that it deserves that trust.

"The climate in the profession has changed since Shipman. The General Medical Council (GMC) has re-formed and tightened up the way it handles complaints against doctors. GPs are even more careful with recording their use of controlled drugs and when signing death and cremation certificates, and health professionals are aware they must question what colleagues do and the way they do it."

On the Shipman Inquiry proposals to make further changes to the GMC, James Johnson said: "The newest changes to the procedures are only a month old. They should be given time to demonstrate they work effectively and fairly to protect patients before further fundamental changes are considered.

"The BMA will wish to consider Dame Janet's proposals very carefully."

Dr Hamish Meldrum, who represents the UK's family doctors as chairman of the BMA's General Practitioners Committee, said: "This is a huge report with a great many recommendations with implications for GPs and primary care trusts.

"We will work with the government to discuss these proposals but in doing so must be conscious of the need for a proportionate response. We must not impose further excessive layers of bureaucracy on the profession at the expense of the face to face time in consultations that our patients value."

In the UK, only the GMC, the body responsible for maintaining the register of all doctors licensed to practise, has the power to strike a doctor’s name from the medical register, suspend a doctor from practice or impose conditions on their registration.

The means to exercise these powers is via Fitness To Practice (FTP) Procedures, which the report described as the "'teeth' by which all other monitoring processes can ultimately be enforced".

The fifth report of the Shipman Inquiry, chaired by Dame Janet Smith, examined how the GMC has operated its FTP procedures from the 1970s and the revised procedures recently put into operation.

The report has put forward many recommendations to government, which will comment early next year.

(SP)