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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 Whereas some doctors have had their licence withdrawn because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!
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 Whereas some doctors have had their licence withdrawn because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!
Competing interests: No competing interests