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back to article Doctors' authorities probe suspension of mucky-mouthed medic

The actions of two senior members of the medical establishment are being investigated by authorities for their role in the suspension of a young Scottish doctor who left foul-mouthed criticism of a quango boss on a web message board. Professor Elisabeth Paice, dean director of postgraduate medical and dental education at the …

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  1. Thomas Baker
    Coat

    A doctor, being held accountable?

    Surely not.

    It's funny that either way this ends up a doctor will be slapped on the wrist. "For what?" you say... Prescribing drugs with hideous side-effects? Pushing drugs to patients that they don't want when far better treatments are available but not pushed by big pharam? Medical incompetence in their general practice? Refusing to treat homeless people? No, someone *swore* (ye gads no!) and someone else's feelings got hurt (aaah diddums).

    Well I'm glad they're being held accountable for something and I'm glad they've got their priorities straight. What if a complaint for abuse had come from a patient? File 13 at source, never would've seen the light of day let alone the press.

    Mines the one without the hippocratic oath in the pocket because really, most doctors in this country wouldn't be able to look at themselves in the mirror of a morning if they'd taken it.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    unfounded or malicious?

    Sounds like the comment was well founded if she was indeed responsible for said cockup. Whether the comments were based on a clinical matter should not even come into it.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Points to consider...

    a) 'malicious and unfounded criticisms' - likely to be deemed as malicious.

    b) 'that may undermine patients' trust' - a 'Private Medical professionals-only Forum' is should not be available to patients, hence can in no way affect a patients trust.

    The rule is not an either [or] rule it is both [and]! I believe that this rule does not apply to private comments, and as such the suspension is invalid.

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  4. ElFatbob

    Doctors suffer too...

    usually from a mistaken belief they are deity, incapable of error.

    Accountable? Only if it suits them.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    And the problem is?

    WTF is going on. So maybe they used a regulation that is not well defined. Using a forum to insult someone using your real name is at best naive and worst malicious. I'm surprised it's gone this far. Lift his suspension on the first regulation and promptly suspend for bringing the authority into disrepute seems a better idea - see Virgin and Facebook.

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  6. Ian Johnston Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Carol Black...

    ...wrote somewhere (last Private Eye?) that she didn't ask for the chap to be suspended, neither did she think it appropriate. Of course Henry II probably said something similar after the unpleasantness in Canterbury.

    IAn

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  7. Brian
    Coat

    @And the problem is?

    The problem is not that they used a regulation that is not well defined (it is well defined, and only applies to clinical matters), but that they abused the regulation, and their positions - for what?

    Because someone from the coalface has the temerity to criticise senior management? Abusive or not, criticism should be expected after the fiasco that Black presided over.

    And I don't think that having a sweary doctor brings any disrepute on a hospital - the arrogance of the senior staff involved does, but then again NHS management are universally derided in the wider community, so their repute is already pretty low.

    I'd promote the guy and sack the two idiots who suspended him.

    Mine's the one with the sodium pentothal in the pocket.

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  8. Mat

    Unfounded????????????

    ---------- SNIP ---------

    The GMC Good Medical Practice guidelines (paragraph 47) prohibit doctors from making "malicious and unfounded criticisms of colleagues that may undermine patients' trust in the care or treatment they receive, or in the judgement of those treating them"

    If she had ANY part in the Doctor Application Database she should be shot!

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    poor numpty

    he should have known the correct phrase was "fucking twat".

    Paris, because...

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unsurprising in one way, surprising in another

    From my own experiences of whistleblowing a member of the medical profession (which was upheld as being correct) and the shenanigans that then happened (which were found to have happened by independant review) which culminated in me having to be retired on medical grounds as a result of the undermining actions taken against me by so-called "colleagues", the inappropriate actions taken against the doctor who dared to criticize a senior member of this profession doesn't surprise me at all: the medical profession, in its professional actions, seems to suffer from endemic abuse of power and process which closely follows the ideas of Groupthink. What is surprising is that this is either not now apparently so widely known or spoken about that a large-scale reassessment of the entire profession in its professional dealings is not in progress. I assume that one possibility for this absence is that the endemic problems it has are so well-established and lon-standing that it either no longer seems shocking, or that the counter-attacks by medical professionals are simply accepted uncritically even when they are based on flimsy evidence and counter to their own proclaimed practices in undermining the credibility of their critics by making unfounded allegations about their mental states, and so on. Of course, it could be that nothing is wrong, but then ow many cases like this have to happen before this convenient brush-off can be reasonably maintained further?

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