Reference To Suicide Is Found 6,753 Times In GDC Database After Information Is Sought On Fitness To Practise Deaths
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- Published: Friday, 08 July 2022 07:00
- Written by Chris Tapper
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The General Dental Council has indicated to GDPUK that it wants to provide ‘clarity’ on the issue surrounding an extremely alarming revelation that has arisen from a Freedom of Information request.
Last month, GDPUK reported that the General Dental Council had turned down a Freedom of Information request asking the regulator to provide the number of registrants who had taken their own lives while under Fitness to Practise investigations.
The GDC initially turned down the FOI request from Consultant Orthodontist Dr Farooq Ahmed.
At the time, the GDC told Dr Ahmed “There is no requirement for the GDC to be notified if a dental professional takes their own life and, because of this, we are unable to routinely capture when this has been the cause of a registrant’s death.”
“On occasion, this information is provided incidentally by a representative of the registrant, and in those cases, it is recorded on the casefile. Due to the incidental nature this information is provided to the GDC, instances have not been recorded in such a way which would support automated reporting and so, to provide the information we do hold, would require an extensive manual search of all fitness to practise cases which have been closed since 2013.”
“Section 12 of the FOI Act allows a public authority to decline a request for information where it estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to locate, extract, and/or retrieve the information requested.”
The appropriate limit for the GDC is 18 hours or £450. The estimate must be reasonable in the circumstances of the case. We estimate that it would take at least eight minutes to review each closed case to identify whether this information had been provided. Between 2013 to 2021 there were 21,111 closed fitness to practise cases.”
These would require 2,815 hours to review. In 2021 alone, there were 1,091 closed fitness to practise cases which would require 145 hours to review. Even if this work were undertaken, because the information is only provided incidentally, it would not provide a complete picture.”
But after Dr Ahmed questioned the GDC’s response to his important request, a letter to him from the regulator seen by GDPUK said that after adopting ‘an alternative way of extracting the information,’ the GDC had carried out a document search on its database, using the search term ‘suicide.’
That search provided 6,753 results.
The GDC said “If each document would take 3 minutes to read and link to a particular case it would take around 338 hours to check.”
The GDC’s letter went on “Although the number appears high we should consider the word ‘suicide’ would potentially appear several times in documents for each case. Also it would also include threats of suicide or relate to third parties. There may also be occasions where the GDC would be unaware, such as long after the FTP instigation or the suicide being unrelated to the proceedings.”
The GDC continued “Although the number appears high we should consider the word ‘suicide’ would potentially appear several times in documents for each case. Also, it would also include threats of suicide or relate to third parties. There may also be occasions where the GDC would be unaware, such as long after the FTP instigation or the suicide being unrelated to the proceedings.”
“In addition, the search does bring different numbers each time it is used so there are limits to the accuracy.”
“We have also considered whether the information could be extracted by refocussing your request or by providing a shorter time span however, as previously mentioned, we may not sometimes know when a registrant has taken their life after the conclusion of an investigation or hearing.”
“We agree that there is a public interest in knowing the number of registrants who have taken their life whilst being investigated for a fitness to practise concern by the General Dental Council, and we do carry out procedures to ensure they receive sufficient support. However, we do not have the resource to extract the requested information accurately.”
The letter to Dr Ahmed concluded with apologies for not fulfilling the consultant’s request although the regulator pointed out that he could request an internal review by the GDC.
GDPUK asked the GDC for the reasoning behind its decision not to comply with Dr Ahmed’s FOI request.
We suggested that even if the word ‘suicide’ was repeated in documents, 6,735 mentions of the term were “Surely a significant and worrying number.”
We asked “The GDC cites time as being a bar to compliance with the FOI request, but surely the importance of this request and the likely interest in the results warrants time being spent on it?”
The GDC explained “The time resource is one factor – and one that the FOI Act allows us to consider as a reason for declining requests for information. The original FOI response makes clear though that this is not the main reason. Rather, the main reason is that we do not currently hold complete data, or data that we could confidently report.”
Yesterday, a spokesperson for the GDC told GDPUK “We want to provide clarity on this important issue, but the information we currently hold is not sufficiently complete or robust for us to be confident in sharing in its current form.”
“We are already looking into what is possible, but this is not straightforward and there are important issues to explore in terms both of the quality and consistency of the data we hold and of the ethical issues around its collection and publication. We look forward to providing an update on this work as it progresses.”
Also yesterday, GDPUK saw the text from a follow-up letter sent to Dr Ahmed written by a Deputy Information Governance Manager, which appeared to be prompted by GDPUK’s question to the GDC.
The letter read “As we mentioned in the correspondence, we are aware of how stressful a fitness to practise investigation can be for a registrant as well as a patient. For this reason, we look to support registrants as much as possible and signpost to the appropriate support.”
“I would like to take this opportunity to clarify that the main reason we are unable to provide the information requested is that we are not currently able to be confident in the completeness or accuracy of the information we do hold. The FOI Act provides an exemption on the grounds of cost, but as we explained in our response, even if we were to carry out this work, because the information is only provided incidentally, we would not be able to provide a complete picture.”
The letter concluded with a near identical paragraph to the statement that the GDC gave to GDPUK (above).
The GDC has long been criticised by dental professionals for the way it treats registrants undergoing FTP investigations and for the length of time it takes to resolve cases, even before COVID.
The regulator has also been strongly criticised in the past couple of years in the way it has ‘aggressively’ pursued investigations.
In 2021, the GDC admitted acting unlawfully during an undercover, under-guise operation against an unnamed clinical dental clinician.
Two investigators posed as relatives of a fictitious housebound elderly lady, in order to try and induce the CDT to act outside his scope of practice, in 2016.
Following a successful action by Dental Protection on behalf of their member, the GDC admitted acting unlawfully during its investigations, through a declaration sealed by the High Court.
GDPUK was told by the GDC that the cost of the compensation paid to the registrant and legal costs amounted to about £38,000.
Dental registrants don’t appear to be convinced that the GDC supports dental professionals undergoing FTP investigations, despite the assurance that the GDC gave Dr Ahmed that “We look to support registrants as much as possible and signpost to the appropriate support.”
One former registrant wrote on Twitter “The GDC proclaims it does support registrants during proceedings, but I know dentists who have been through the system and come out the other end with no reprimand, but they got no support or offer of support. All they got were extra charges added to the original complaint.”
Another dentist who wished to remain anonymous told GDPUK earlier this week “I went through an 18-month-long investigation by the GDC into a vexatious complaint that was finally thrown out by a paperwork committee.”
“The GDC went through all my notes and added half-a-dozen charges – again, which were all eventually thrown out, although I had to spend a lot of time with my indemnity provider, in defending the accusations.”
She said “At one point, a caseworker added a completely unjustified charge of ‘dishonesty,’ which I found particularly difficult to comprehend and was extremely upset by.’
“I was offered no support at all from the GDC caseworkers, nor was I pointed towards where I could actually find support.”
“I found the whole process lonely, vindictive and dispiriting.”
“The only solace was that the case was thrown out well before a hearing and I can only thank clinical representatives on the committee who presumably realised the complaint was a joke which shouldn’t have been entertained. The whole experience was a nightmare and four years on, I still haven’t recovered my confidence fully,” she told us.
Again on Twitter, another dentist said of the GDC’s ‘support’ - “All they do is invite you to phone the Samaritans. He added that if you did phone the Samaritans there’s little they can do.
He concluded “Sympathy is a poor treatment for a professional knife wound.”
In 2014, dentist and Mole Valley MP Sir Paul Beresford spoke in the House of Commons in a debate on the General Dental Council.
Sir Paul told MPs “It appears that National Health Service complaints to the GDC almost certainly plough straight into the full procedure, leading to fitness to practise hearings.”
“For the patient and the practitioner, these are generally long, drawn out and draining. For the dentist and his or her indemnifier, the costs can be ghastly, adding to the professional’s fear and emotional trauma.”
“In case the public were unaware, the GDC took out a full-page advertisement in one of the national papers encouraging complaints—or, perhaps I should say, “advising patients how to complain”— to the GDC.”
Earlier this year, the Professional Standards Authority found that the GDC failed Standard Fifteen of the Standards of Good Regulation, which checks that a “Regulator’s process for examining and investigating cases is fair, proportionate, deals with cases as quickly as is consistent with a fair resolution of the case and ensures that appropriate evidence is available to support decision-makers to reach a fair decision that protects the public at each stage of the process.”
In the PSA’s performance review of the GDC for 2020/21, published in April 2022, the PSA said it “Had concerns about the GDC’s timeliness in fitness to practise in the previous three performance reviews.”
A PSA summary said “We remain concerned that the GDC is taking too long to progress cases from receipt to final hearing, and there are a high number of older cases within the system. The position has not improved this year, although the GDC has a plan in place to improve timeliness.”
“We concluded that Standard 15 was not met, and we will monitor the GDC’s work to improve its performance in this area.”
For dentists who may be experiencing mental health problems, the Dentists’ Health Support Programme (DHST) supported by the British Dental Association can be contacted on:
0207 224 4671
Alternatively, dentists can contact the Confidental helpline, manned by dentist volunteers with training from organisations including Mind, Relate and the Samaritans. Confidental can be contacted on:
03339 875158
If you have been affected by issues raised in this article, help is also available from:
https://www.supportfordentalteams.org
https://www.confidental-helpline.org
suicide
A refusal to investigate an outcome of their activities when that may well be suicide tells us just how much they value registrants.suicide
A refusal to investigate an outcome of their activities when that may well be suicide tells us just how much they value registrants.You need to be logged in to leave comments.
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