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EDITORIALS: JN Johnson Making self regulation credible BMJ 1998; 316: 1847-1848 [Full text]

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W H Hartmann   (30 June 1998)

Self-regulation must be credible to the public

Richard Nicholson   (27 July 1998)

Query 30 June 1998
W H Hartmann, Exec.Vice Pres. Am.Board of Pathology Send response to journal: Re: Query	The last sentence of the fourth paragraph from the end mentions "formal accreditation, as has happened with clinical pathology accreditation". Would you be so kind as to supply me with a reference? Thank you.
Self-regulation must be credible to the public 27 July 1998
Richard Nicholson, Editor 31 Corsica St, London, N5 1JT Send response to journal: Re: Self-regulation must be credible to the public	The Editor, British Medical Journal 24 June, 1998 EDITOR - Taken with his letter1 in your previous issue, James Johnson’s editorial2 on self regulation is another nail in its coffin. His concern in ‘Making self regulation credible’ is to make it credible to doctors, not the public. His letter - ‘Cover picture meant that BMJ had descended to level of tabloid newspapers’ complained that your use of a photograph of a bereaved Bristol parent sensationalised the issue. Maybe he only saw the model coffin in the picture. But doctors need to be reminded of the depth of sorrow and anger in that mother’s eyes - the natural response when your child died unnecessarily. It is the sorrow and anger caused by doctors to real, live human beings that self regulation must address. Patients with all their emotions have to be at the centre of self regulation, not some mechanically-performed peer review. Mr Johnson’s editorial may read well in the corridors of medical politics, but it gives no comfort to patients trying to deal with the General Medical Council. Last week I met a couple who had just been told that it would take the GMC at least 12 months to decide whether to institute disciplinary proceedings against a doctor. A year or more, that is, not from the time of their complaint but from delivery of a dossier they had assembled at its request. It consists of nearly 1,000 pages of evidence supporting their complaint that one of their children had died, and another been left severely brain-damaged, as a result of being used without their consent in a research project. Nor does the editorial give hope that the GMC will better fulfil its statutory responsibility for medical education so that doctors will be trained not to abuse and misuse their patients. One possible approach is to teach students more of the humanities and, in particular, about ethics. Recognising this, the GMC instructed medical schools to teach medical ethics over a decade ago. Yet it has not withdrawn approval from those schools that still have no regular medical ethics teaching, one of which - the Middlesex / University College London - is right on its own doorstep. If leaders of the profession like Mr Johnson are incapable of recognising the centrality of patients and their experiences to self regulation, this extraordinary privilege will be taken away from us. Richard Nicholson Editor, Bulletin of Medical Ethics, 31 Corsica St, London N5 1LA. Tel: 0171 354 4252 Fax: 0171 704 2874 Email: Bulletin_of_Medical_Ethics@compuserve.com 1. Johnson J N. Cover picture meant that BMJ had descended to level of tabloid newspapers. BMJ 1998:316:1831 2. Johnson J N. Making self regulation credible. BMJ 1998:316:1847-8