Help Sitemap Home Skip Navigation Contact Us Disability Statement

 
 
Thursday, 21st August 2008

Premium Article !

Your account has been frozen. For your available options click the below button.

Options

Premium Article !

To read this article in full you must have registered and have a Premium Content Subscription with the The Scotsman site.

Subscribe

Registered Article !

To read this article in full you must be registered with the site.

Sign In
Register

Doctors to face annual check-ups on their competence



Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image

Published Date: 23 July 2008
By Russell Jackson
ALL of Britain's 150,000 doctors will face annual assessments so licences can be removed from poor performers, under radical proposals to be outlined by the Chief Medical Officer today.
GPs, hospital consultants and private practitioners will also have to renew their licences every five years under plans to be announced by Sir Liam Donaldson.

He will call for senior doctors to assess others who are practising in their area to ens
ure they are not putting patients at risk.

Patients will also be asked for their feedback during the assessment process – the first of its kind in the world.

Sir Liam's report, Medical Revalidation: Principle and Next Steps, will also suggest steps to ensure that doctors keep up to date with medical advances.

The annual assessments will look at prescribing habits, adequate assessment of a patient's condition and any personal issues which might affect their work, like a problem with drugs or alcohol. Trials will begin within two years.

Critics last night said the plans would mean doctors spending less time with patients and practising "defensive medicine".

The General Medical Council recommended continuing reviews of doctors' credentials ten years ago, after a series of scandals over medical incompetence.

Weaknesses in the monitoring system for GPs were also revealed by the case of Harold Shipman, who murdered up to 250 of his patients, usually with drugs that he had stockpiled.



The full article contains 238 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 23 July 2008 12:50 AM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: General practitioners
 
1

Charles Linskaill,

Edinburgh 23/07/2008 02:17:29

Good Idea!

Being Paid £100k+ per year, Don't make you God!

By far too many GP's, work a strict 9am-5pm period, if you child is dying at 5.10pm, your GP, cant even,,.

'Pick-Up' the phone to help you in need!

This 'Need' is now rejected by GP's!, with the NO,...

'call-outs' or, "I'm too Posh" to speak on a phone to my Patients!

'Snob Value' or What,?

Certainly NOT,...'Health-Care' in our Community anymore!

YES! Its about time,..

'Stand-Up' and be 'Accounted For'!
2

Charles Linskaill,

Edinburgh 23/07/2008 02:30:53

"Stand-Up and Deliver",..More The Likes!
3

Anne,

Eaglesham 23/07/2008 06:36:31
And how many more pen-pushers will this require?
By all means go for revalidation, but five-yearly, surely. There simply would not be enough time for doctors to be constantly evaluating one another - and the paperwork!

Doctors, however, are not the only people allowed to prescribe drugs. I take it that the same conditions will be applied to nurse-prescribers, whose training in pharmacology falls far short of that of doctors?
4

SouthernSkye,

23/07/2008 07:23:18
Anne....Well said, more jobs for the Browns Boyz. Another vast department requiring public funding. With the economy balancing on a knife-edge at the moment we should be looking at slimming down Govt. departments and civil service jobs, not creating another money eating monster.
5

SW,

P&K 23/07/2008 07:54:35
More red tape, more expense. Why not test MPs? We should have a league table with the bottom performing MPs having their new kitchens taken away or at least no longer allowed to feed on the corpse of the tax payer.
6

ebbi,

spain 23/07/2008 11:21:10
about time.i was almost killed by two incompetent idiots called general practitioners over a very bad diagnosis.their license to practice should be taken away for good.
7

JayDeeTee,

23/07/2008 12:39:36
There should be annual competence checks made on MPs. These people are capable of untold damage.
8

JayDeeTee,

23/07/2008 12:40:19
#5. Sorry.....didn't see you already made this point.
9

The Former Mr. Angry,

Perth 23/07/2008 15:38:10
May help to defuse potential legal suit situations. Tis all depends on who is doing the assessing. Doctors assessing doctors is a nonsense - similar to MPs deciding about their own expenses. The GMC already covers this situation to a certain extent. What is needed is a lay panel who can call in expert medical advice if required to keep assessment relatively fair and objective and without vested interests.
10

Dr Finlay,

Tannochbrae 23/07/2008 20:51:31
Given that well over 85% of patients in survey after survey have no complaints about their doctor, the paranoia demonstrated here is unbelievable. Think about the implications of this proposal:
- there are well over 100,000 doctors registered with the GMC.
- how many "assessors" (who all need trained, monitored for consistency, and paid!) required?
- how many appointments or operations will be cancelled for all these assessments?
- how will appeals and disputes be managed?
- how many will "fail" and need re-trained or supervised and by whom(no, sorry, the GMC can't just erase them - that breaches Human Rights regulations!)
- how will we replace those who are re-training?

It is entirely possible that far more patients will be harmed because of the disruption and cost of these proposals than will be saved from harm from the few unknown incompetent doctors this will pick up. It will certainly cost a fortune to the tax-payer.

Net result: more patients harmed and more tax-pounds spent! Finally, remember that Harold Shipman passed every measurement of medical competency and was caught because he amateurishly forged a will - none of this would have found him!

This is a political stunt and nothing more! Is there any profession, trade or business that doesn't have a few renegades? Where do we draw the line?
11

Dr JS,

ABERDEEN 23/07/2008 23:30:01
I echo what Dr Finlay has to say in his post @ 10

We as doctors have known for some years that re-validation was inevitable, and rightly so. The public, our patients, to whom we are accountable, have a right to expect high standards from us. There has never been a doubt about this.

However , the method in which this is conducted , needs to take into account the factors mentioned above. Take this into consideration, for my appraisal this year, I had to cancel an afternoon clinic to go through a portfolio with a trained "appraiser". This meant that I was not able to see 18 patients. Although necessary to ensure that GP's are keeping abreast of new developments and demonstrating continuing professional development, it takes a HUGE amount of time and manpower. All of this costs MONEY which will ultimately come "out of the patient pot" so to speak.

Most GPs are already doing an appraisal every year and asking patients what they think of their service, so I am slightly confused on what this new version actually means. The only different I can see is that there are reports we will have our referral habits analysed as well – can we really infer whether someone is a good or bad doctor on referral rates? It is well known that doctors with increased knowledge in a particular area actually have higher referral rates so this may not be terribly useful.

Patient groups have welcomed the announcement in the belief that it may pick up poorly performing doctors, raise standards and alert to another Shipman. However, critics have said that Shipman would have passed the appraisal and revalidation process with flying colours.

As for you Charlie Boy in post 1- Careful what you wish for. Dinne get too smart or you'll see even less of your GP.....kin what i mean?





12

Dr JS,

ABERDEEN 23/07/2008 23:30:59
I echo what Dr Finlay has to say in his post @ 10

We as doctors have known for some years that re-validation was inevitable, and rightly so. The public, our patients, to whom we are accountable, have a right to expect high standards from us. There has never been a doubt about this.

However , the method in which this is conducted , needs to take into account the factors mentioned above. Take this into consideration, for my appraisal this year, I had to cancel an afternoon clinic to go through a portfolio with a trained "appraiser". This meant that I was not able to see 18 patients. Although necessary to ensure that GP's are keeping abreast of new developments and demonstrating continuing professional development, it takes a HUGE amount of time and manpower. All of this costs MONEY which will ultimately come "out of the patient pot" so to speak.

Most GPs are already doing an appraisal every year and asking patients what they think of their service, so I am slightly confused on what this new version actually means. The only different I can see is that there are reports we will have our referral habits analysed as well – can we really infer whether someone is a good or bad doctor on referral rates? It is well known that doctors with increased knowledge in a particular area actually have higher referral rates so this may not be terribly useful.

Patient groups have welcomed the announcement in the belief that it may pick up poorly performing doctors, raise standards and alert to another Shipman. However, critics have said that Shipman would have passed the appraisal and revalidation process with flying colours.

As for you Charlie Boy in post 1- Creful what you wish for. Dinne get too smart or you'll see even less of your GP.....kin what i mean?





13

Dr JS,

ABERDEEN 23/07/2008 23:50:27
And as for evidence showing that a doctor is engaging in "continuing professional development" ie keeping skills up to date, I think that it will mean "more time off for study leave" ie more time off for bookwork, more conferences, more seminars, more lectures, more drug rep sponsored meals (I mean educational meetings! thats waht they are called nowadays!!!!)......................LESS TIME FOR PATIENTS.....

So if you thought seeing your GP now is difficult......son...."you aint seen nothing yet......!" (excuse the pun)

afterall Charles (post1) you want to know your GP is "up to scratch"!!!!!!!






14

Charles Linskaill,

Edinburgh 24/07/2008 09:08:28

Ok, Ok, Dr JS ~12/13,

Point taken!, I'm a medical critic! afterall,..

"one needs one", (no pun) to a little feed-back on issues of such importance.

While all the 'Mice' Play,....Charlie has his say!
:)
15

linda mccafferty,

Glasgow 25/07/2008 00:03:16
I did like your quote Dr JS of Aberdeen......"The public, our patients,to whom we are accountable, has a right to expect high standards from us . it's a pity not all doctors think your way of thinking .

 

Comment on this Story

 

In order to post comments you must Register or Sign In

 
 
RSS Feed of this article's comments
Delivery formats: RSS, Atom, Javascript & Email
 
  

 
 


Sister Newspapers:
Press Complaints Commission

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Practice. If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the PCC by clicking here.