How to investigate complaints

doi:10.1136/bmj.39471.702141.3A

BMJ 2008;336:231 (2 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39471.702141.3A

Letters

Open letter to the GMC

How to investigate complaints

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In his open letter to the president of the General Medical Council(GMC) about the case of David Southall, Wheatley refers to aprevious inquiry conducted by "a panel far better qualifiedand more competent than your own on child protection issues."¹

I was responsible for setting up that panel. As president ofthe Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health I was askedin 2000 to assist Southall’s employing trust in its investigationof complaints about his child protection work, by putting forwardnames of paediatricians who would be willing to review and reporton his practice.

In a letter to the trust and subsequently in a journal article,²I set out the principles that I believe should govern such investigations.The investigators must be unbiased and have no rigid a prioriopinions on the key issues. Actual or perceived conflicts ofinterest arising from, for example, previous clinical . . . [Full text of this article]

David M B Hall, professor emeritus of community paediatrics

¹ University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN

d.hall@sheffield.ac.uk