Tackling bullying and undermining in the NHS

At its annual conference on 3 April the General Medical Council (GMC) announced that it was piloting a training scheme designed to help doctors call out unprofessional behaviour by colleagues.1

The training will initially be delivered at about 14 sites around the UK, identified by the GMC as organisations that may benefit from the training.

Speaking at the conference, Jo Wren, a principal regional liaison adviser, said that the training was developed after doctors told the regulator that they often struggled to challenge colleagues’ poor behaviour. The aim was to tackle more of these issues before they required regulatory intervention, she said.

The training is partially based on work by researchers from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee, USA,2 [3] which suggested that doctors …