GMC failed to act on doctors’ suicide risk
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- Published: Monday, 14 December 2015 07:53
- Written by News Editor
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Pulse, the GPs’ publication, has reported that 13 doctors died while General Medical Council (GMC) 'failed to act' on suicides risk. The GMC should have ‘immediately ceased’ their fitness-to-practise cases and ’urgently reformed’ processes after concerns were first raised about the high numbers of doctors taking their own life while under investigation, a new review has concluded.
The review, Suicide whilst under the GMC’s fitness-to-practise investigation: Were they preventable?, published in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine suggests that there were 13 deaths by suicide while the GMC was conducting a review of its fitness-to-practise procedures. As such, GMC review last year of 28 doctors who died by suicide while under fitness-to-practise (FTP) investigation between 2005 and 2013 was ‘reactive’, when it could have been proactive.
The new review - written by Dr David Casey, a GP and a tutor in medical law, ethics and professionalism at the University of Central Lancashire, and Dr Kartina Choong, a senior lecturer in law and ethics at University of Central Lancashire - also criticises coroners for not raising FTP investigations as a possible suicide risk earlier.
The GMC’s review, led by Sarndrah Hosfall, the chief executive for the National Patient Safety Organisation, outlined a number of core recommendations that it needed to implement in order to improve its fitness-to-practise processes – in a bid to offer more support vulnerable doctors under investigation.
The review found:
- Some doctors were receiving multiple letters from the GMC, with one doctor receiving up to five letters over a four-day period;
- Many doctors felt the GMC’s tone was ’accusatory’, with a failure to show compassion;
- Doctors felt they did not receive any support, and there was ‘minimal’ communication with them;
- And there were unacceptable delays in investigating some concerns, in some cases leading to a higher risk of suicide.
- But the new study claims that the concerns were first raised in 2012 by an FOI request by a psychiatrist, and that there should have been immediate action before the review was published in 2014.
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