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LETTERS: Michael O'Donnell The General Medical Council and the future of revalidation: Regulation, regulation, regulation BMJ 2005; 330: 1447 [Full text]

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Regulation, Regulation,

John M McGarry   (4 July 2005)

Regulation, Regulation, 4 July 2005
John M McGarry, Consultant Gynaecologist OLD RECTORY, BITTADON,BARNSTAPLE EX31 4HN Send response to journal: Re: Regulation, Regulation,	I think I am unique in that I was elected to the General Medical Council and served for four years on the Professional Conduct Committee and have also just completed six years as a Lay Member on the equivalent committee of the General Council of the Bar. Sitting on both bodies has enabled me to compare how each of the professions deal with their possible recalcitrants. Doctor members on the GMC seem mostly to treat their fellow medics much more harshly than the lawyers seem to handle their colleagues. Interestingly I dealt with no cases where a lawyer was arraigned for expressing an honestly held opinion which the complainant felt was totally incorrect. Whereas some doctors have had their licence withdrawn because their opinion about how a medical problem was handled differed from the majority view of the rest of the medical profession. An example of this is those doctors who were said to have made pecuniary gain over obtaining kidneys for transplant, and yet more recently some renal specialists have suggested that there is nothing wrong in paying donors and their agents (who could be doctors) for obtaining donor kidneys. Competing interests: J M McG had a complaint against him upheld by the GMC in 1990. He was reprimanded by letter!