A tribute to Dr Rita Pal

Doctor Tracey Bloggs apologises to all those who have been inconvenienced by her absence and in pleased to have reached the stage of being again able to say hello to the world, unfettered by any constraints on her eloquence.

She would like to begin with a tribute to a doctor whose work she has steadfastly admired since being introduced to the world of blogging and the alternative dimensions of cyberspace: Dr Rita Pal. Doctor Bloggs was pleased to know she is not alone in her admiration of Dr Rita, whose name is engraved forever on the Wall of Honour in the Royal Society of Medicine. It is a well deserved honour and tribute to see Dr Rita Pal's name amongst the great and the good of medicine, including Herr Catto himself, as well as numerous other illustrious professors.






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Clare Gerada censored at the Times - Competition

Doctor Bloggs enjoys public debate as much as the next doctor - the comment below about Miss Clare's PHP service did not get past the censors (aka Moderators). See the Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7093633.ece

Clare Gerada is already well known in the Blogosphere where she had the ultimate accolade - her own page on NHSExposedblog

The Practioners Health Programme - PHP

EXPENSIVE WALLPAPER This service cost £800,000 in its first two years. (and 180 doctors got in touch)

The bidding for the service excluded existing charities working in this area and led for example, to the closure of the Doctors Support Line, an anonymous confidential service already providing support for doctors.

Doctors risk their registration by approaching the Dr Clare Gerada and the PHP because the General Medical Council considers mental health difficulties within the profession as a regulatory offence.

Many trusts and employers will not employ doctors who have been before the General Medical Council, on principle, regardless of the circumstances of their referral. This means that the problems of doctors mental health continues to be driven underground.

A doctor can be struck off for being depressed. Even if they are not struck off, they face years of investigation and "supervision" by their regulatory body that leads to a worsening of their mental health and suicide. A doctor has to have a solicitor, a barrister and a Defence Body, go before the General Medical Council to "prove themselves of sane mind" In 2003/4 5% of doctors died who were under investigation by the General Medical Council for their mental health (9 of 214). If this death rate had occurred any where else, including an Intensive Care Unit, there would be investigation. After that, the General Medical Council stopped collecting the figures

This approach is more expensive Labour Wallpaper covering over the cracks. Not until the General Medical Council accepts that doctors can have mental health problems without their registration, careers and mental health being damaged further by investigations and "GMC Supervision" will the situation improve. The present approach combined with the publicity that Clare Gerada so blatantly seeks for her service do more damage than good.

This week's competition asks readers to suggest a reason Doctor Bloggs comment was censored

FYI - Miss Gerada, is the husband of Dr Simon Wesseley at Kings College of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome fame

Copyright (c) Nasty Gnome Party

The MDU, MPS, GMC, £128 million a year fighting amongst ourselves

Follow the money


Each year a doctors spends £415 a year on the GMC - and the GMC spends £42 million prosecuting doctors

Value for money?? you are better off shopping at Tesco


The GMC spends £42 million prosecuting doctors

The Medical Protection Society (MPS) spends £43 million "defending" doctors
The Medical Defence Union (MDU) spends £23 million "defending" doctors

The GMC spends 42 million pounds a year prosecuting doctors in an elaborate charade that involves the top QCs in the country. Nothing but the best for Mssrs Naill Dickson and Peter Rubin. If you want to see this circus in action, the Wakefield case is on again. Free entry, Euston rd, running daily until summer. All because, ten years ago, the Lancet published a paper the drug companies didn't like.

Hardly surprising the public think the medical profession are in the hands of Big Pharma and the Vaccine Companies, especially after the swine flu fiasco.

The cost of a GMC hearing is about £100,000 on each side - whose making the profit here?

Lawyers of course!
Why would lawyers stop the gravy train? The nice doctors pay their wages. The more trouble you are in, the longer your hearing, the more the lawyers get paid. Why would they help? Its steady money as long as they don't rock the boat. One solicitor even sleeps in the same house as a legal employee of one defence society - hardly a "commercially neutral act".

Lawyers do not care that most doctors end up financially crippled, unemployable and mentally broken. Because a medical colleague didn't like you, because you picked a fight with big Pharma, because you had an episode of depression, or worst of all, you put your patients above management targets.

The MDU and MPS only want your subscriptions - once they have given the appearance of support, you are on your own and the GMC wants you broken and bankrupt.

If you are in trouble,
Get independent legal advice fast. Don't waste time with MDU or MPS lawyers - it will cost you more in the long run
Join a proper Union click here for more details
Make sure your household insurance or breakdown cover includes legal costs

Interesting quotes from the defence society websites - read the small print and follow the money


"MPS is not an insurance company. The benefits of membership are discretionary – this allows us the flexibility to provide help and support even in unusual circumstances." (and abandon you at the first opportunity)

The MDU:
"can" provide advice and representation should you find yourself the subject of a GMC or disciplinary investigation relating to clinical practice.

"The MDU is still a mutual company owned by our members, who include doctors, dentists and other healthcare professionals. The benefits of membership of the MDU are all discretionary and are subject to the Memorandum and Articles of Association."
If you want to be represented in your struggles with your employers and your regulatory body -
1 - get proper advice,
2 - make sure your household insurance covers legal costs,
3 - join a proper union like Unite

Don't waste your hopes, energy, time or chances of winning your case whilst the MDU or MPS are acting for you - it is not in their interests to defend you, but it is in their interests to keep the GMC sweet, after all, without the GMC where would they be?

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Tears before Bedtime, Niall and Peter have fun in the snow

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http://www.lizmiller.info/


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Suspensions, Erasures and GMC hearings prior to 2001

URGENT - if you know any doctors whose licence to practice has been subjected to GMC Conditions, Suspension or Erasure, prior to 2001, please contact me urgently.

The GMC has admitted in open court that they used Predeterminations in cases prior to 2001, when computers were introduced. In other words, the panel Chairman decided the verdict before the hearing took place and by consequence, whatever happened in the hearing was, therefore irrelevant. You might as well have sung the National Anthem

This does not mean that they do not still decide the verdict in advance, it is just harder to prove.

Prior to 2001, the Predetermined Verdict was placed in the accused file. You need to get a Subject access request and then get a copy of your file from the GMC.

The High Court takes a dim view of Predeterminations. Justice Forbes does not like to see the legal process brought into disrepute.

If you know anyone who has had a run in with the GMC prior to 2001, please get in touch urgently at Liz@moodmapping.com Time is not on your side because the decision to allow such cases to be appealed was made in June 2009 and the clock is ticking


Further information is available from GMCinjustice.org Click here








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Doctors - bullies at heart - Doctors Net UK

Thank you Jeremy Laurence for giving me fair hearing in the Independent yesterday. Your article was honest and told it as it was. Click here to read it

For those people who think that doctors have any consideration for the mentally ill, beyond getting them out of their clinics, the following story shows how it is today.

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In an pseudo funny account of what happened to a deeply disturbed woman who interrupted his clinic, a well known doctor and medical tabloid columnist wrote, on a private medical forum, under the title "Acute Psychosis Fun"

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It may seem funny to describe people in this way, but it reminds me of Victorian ladies, visiting the local asylum on a Sunday afternoon. It also reminds me of playground bullying. These doctors need to be brought before the General Medical Council for bringing the profession into disrepute.

The GMC prowls the pages of that private doctors forum, looking for those doctors who are naive enough to disclose their mental health problems or express opinions about Dame Carol Black.

But the GMC does not give a toss about attitudes to people with mental health problems. Try substituting the words "Paki" or "Gay" for psychotic and see how it reads. At least there is a law against that kind of abuse.

And for those who have an obsessive and unhealthy interest in this blog and this post, I suggest you click here on this link

and for more information about how the GMC works you can Click here

and click here

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What is racist, homophobic, prejudiced and not the GMC?

Show trials whilst parading the bodies of the dead and living dead. GMC news reports the case of "a doctor didn't attend their GMC hearing". So you thought you could just walk away and the GMC wouldn't notice you had not attended to hear their verdict on your "misconduct"?

If you don't turn up for your execution, or defend yourself in their show trial, the GMC will erase you and publicly drag your body through the streets. The GMC will highlight your case in their "warnings to doctors" with enough details for your friends, family, future employers and anyone with an ounce of initiative to find your identity. They will send your corpse to every doctor in the land trussed up in a copy of GMC News.

In the meantime the GMC lets those who help people to die in the name of the "palliative care" are allowed to practice with impunity. Step forward Robbie Powell's doctors and Dr Ann J Barton.

The extra- quasi-judicial sanctions of the GMC include

Death
1 - By harrying you to suicide. In 2003/4; 9 of 215 doctors prior to any hearing quasi-judicial investigation by the GMC died, three at least, were through suicide

2 - Deaths, disease and marriage breakup secondary to the stress of drawn out proceedings where your life is laid bare for every newspaper to devour. Eaton published a paper around 2004 on the mortality and morbidity associated with GMC proceedings. It was in the region of 30%

Living death
1 - Financial ruin
The Defence Unions run out on you, leaving you with legal bills that would sink a Rothschild. The GMC using its member subscriptions can bet the bank and its reserves, to raise enough complaints against you, until you and your family are homeless and destitute

2 - Reputational Ruin
The GMC allows enough misinformation to leak into the newspapers, not least through its own barristers' innuendos, to make Max Moseley blush.

3 - Clinical Ruin
Modern Prescreening employment forms ensure that even a minor brush with the GMC means you never work again.




As you sow, so shall you reap

For the record Public's trust in profession betrayed by General Medical Council


Judge Michael will be soon be sitting, and like Judge Judy, he rehears cases that come before the General Medical Council and gives his own verdict. If, for example, your colleagues will not cooperate with your assessment, without which you get struck off, it is understandable that a naive, newly qualified young doctor might do something, that with, hindsight was silly. No one died, and there is more to this case than meets the eye. Yet the GMC have paraded this parody before the nation. Disproportionate is the word that comes to mind.

Makes a nonsense of confidentiality

Cheer up love, you are better off without them. And the answer to my question - "you think of something, I cant."





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Medical Defence Union and Medical Protection Society

How much are you as a doctor worth to an Medico Legal Adviser? If you use their solicitors your case is worth tens of thousands of pounds! And, in most professions, such a referral is worth 10% of the case fee.

How much are the defence unions, medical legal representatives paid? not a lot, 60 - 80 K with a bit more at the higher levels. Peanuts for a doctor in todays market.

Legal bills for the medical profession, between the GMC and solicitors and MDU are probably in the region of a 100 million pounds a year. I will do the exact calculation when I start investigating the behaviour of the defence unions and General Medical Council in more detail

Is someone getting a kickback? It looks as though they are. It smells as though they are. It feels as though they are. Because Medico legal advisers and MDU solicitors truss doctors up like they were chickens in the queue for the supermarket. The solicitors want Capability Hearings, they want GMC hearings. This is their steady income. More often than not, you are better off with without a solicitor than one from the MDU.

Follow the money

There has to be a reason for this behaviour. And the reason is usually money. Perhaps the solicitors are even paying the Trust representatives. Once greed gets into a system, it is like water, there is no stopping the flow.

If you use MDU legal services, look at what is happening to you very carefully. Is it is in your best interests?

In the meantime, the GMC just sit back and prepare for their Sunday roast, and lo and behold! The bird arrives gutted, filleted and ready to cook



Copyright (c) Dr. Liz Miller
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GMC scheduling problems - too much Sex and drugs and rock and roll

This month's circus at the GMC has run into scheduling problems - too much sex and drugs and rock and roll. See click here for link

For an illustrated version check Dr Rita Pal's Ward 87 click here

This month's delights are sex - with patients and colleagues abroad (isn't that what foreign conferences are for?) Drugs, another Dr Shipman or Not? We will never know as Dr Barton's case has run out of time. And as for the rock and roll - check out the doctors with the foreign names

In the meantime, they take the innocents to Manchester, where they can skin them quietly


Copyright (c) Dr. Liz Miller
http://www.lizmiller.info/

Medical Protection Society, Medical Defence Union or Bareback?

How well do the defence societies help doctors in difficulty with their employers and the GMC?



Crown Indemnity protects National Health Service doctors from claims of negligence, so why join a defence union?

1 - To provide medical insurance for private practice

2 - To defend them in a court of law and represent them from accusations of negligence, where their Trust fails to protect their interest

3 - To provide legal representation should he or she come before the GMC and Trusts


The most important difference between the Medical Defence Union and the Medical Protection Society lies in the third area.


When choosing a defence body, or other legal insurance, the doctor needs to know whether their defence body colludes with the GMC and NHS Trusts, whether they abandon doctors at the first sign of trouble and whether they act fairly and ethically and whether they have the doctor's interest at heart.

One example might be, how do the defence bodies view a capability hearing? Do they understand that going to a capability hearing is the single worst move any doctor can make? Would the doctor be better joining a Trade Union? At least Trade Unions understand the dangers of a capability hearing

For whom does the defence body work for?

The GMC, the Trust, Zurich Insurance or their doctors?

In the coming weeks, I will see how the Defence Bodies score in their


1 - legal knowledge and understanding of the GMC processes
2 - understanding of employment law
3 - understanding of Trust, GMC and relevant quasijudicial processes
4 - Moral and ethical stance, did they support the doctor and help them through one of the most difficult periods of their career, or did they abandon the doctor without legal assistance

and most importantly:
5 - Outcome: whether doctors were sacked, reached compromise agreements, ended up in the GMC or were able to get back to the work

If you know someone who has experience of the MDU or MPS, or other assistance scheme, please email me at liz at liz miller dot co dot uk

I will post my conclusions in due course Click here for more information

Copyright (c) Liz Miller
http://www.lizmiller.info/



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