Fitness to practise decisions must take into account pandemic factors such as fatigue, GMC says

Fitness to practise assessors must take into account the circumstances that doctors were working under at the time when deciding about incidents that occurred during the covid-19 pandemic, an updated guidance from the General Medical Council says.1

These circumstances include workforce shortages, “sustained fatigue,” and requirements to work “outside normal areas of practice.” Delays to treatment because patients put off seeking medical …