Government wants doctors to report unfit colleagues

Doctors in Britain should take action when they know that a colleague is performing badly, said a government report this week (see also p402). The long awaited report on dealing with poorly performing doctors proposes that the obligation to report colleagues who could be unfit to practise should be written into contracts. But the report emphasises that the government wants “to establish a culture and a climate within the NHS that is sympathetic to the problems of doctors whose standards are poor.” Stephen Dorrell, secretary of state for health, said, “This is not a ‘shop a doc' scheme.”

The working party that produced the report was set up in 1993 after a spate …