Proposals of Donaldson report are “not evidence based,” says Scottish health department

The health department in Scotland has strongly rejected many of the proposals put forward in July by England's chief medical officer to reform the way UK doctors are regulated. The key complaint of the Scottish Executive Health Department is that many of the recommendations are not evidence based and are “unlikely to result in improvements in patient safety.”

In a response to Liam Donaldson's report Good Doctors, Safer Patients (BMJ 2006;333:163), Harry Burns, Scotland's chief medical officer, and Paul Martin, the …