Members of the public and most patients will usually be completely unaware of even the existence of the General Medical Council (GMC) – the official regulator of medical practice in the UK. But they will be very aware that, increasingly, they often don’t get very good care when they go to the local surgery or hospital.
So how much of recent dramatic decline in the NHS experience, frequently attributed to too little money invested in the system, is in fact down to something else; increasingly poor regulation of medicine in this country?
And how much should the ordinary person in the street care about the latest shenanigans at the regulator?
It has now been revealed the GMC allows doctors who change gender to have their past disciplinary records expunged from the public record.
The revelation emerged after concerns trans medic Dr Beth Upton – currently at the centre of an employment tribunal in Scotland – had been handed a new registration number. Dr Upton is one of 62 medics to have been given a new registration with a different GMC number.
This should matter a lot to you if ever you want to see a doctor. If you become concerned that your physician is treating you badly, or even dangerously, you can visit the GMC website, and check for free their past record in terms of disciplinary matters.
It is the equivalent of a doctor’s professional fingerprint.
You can discover whether they have had significant run-ins with the regulator, if other patients have complained in the past, and if serious allegations were upheld. This is extremely helpful to ensuring doctors who deliver good care are distinguished from dangerous ones.
But now it has been revealed that the medics watchdog erases this public disciplinary history for doctors who change their genders. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realise that dodgy medics can now hide their disciplinary history by choosing to change their gender identity. Changing gender basically erases your past on the GMC medical register.
It’s impossible to overstate how important the medical registry is. Using it, I was able to uncover the fact that a woman who faked a medical degree certificate to work as a psychiatrist for more than two decades, and who was recently jailed for fraud for seven years, had in fact been the subject of several complaints from patients.
Zholia Alemi worked across the UK after claiming to have qualified overseas. She even had the power to detain patients against their will using the Mental Health Act.
At the sentencing hearing, the Judge called for an inquiry to be held into how the GMC registered her as a doctor, when the documents she submitted in 1995 were « clearly false ».
It is also claimed the GMC failed to properly investigate allegations the former medical director of the Lucy Letby hospital Ian Harvey « misled the public in media statements », encouraged « an atmosphere of secrecy and fear » and failed to act « appropriately or in a timely manner » when consultants raised concerns. He denies the claims and has apologised for not communicating better.
As a psychiatrist who has been involved in the psychological care of rape victims, I know how important it is that a female patient, recovering from this kind of trauma, should be able to specifically request a female doctor. But the way the GMC administers its register, patients are now unable to find out if their doctor was born a man.
Doctors do not elect those who run the GMC and have little or no say in how this organisation regulates medicine, despite the fact every registered doctor in this county has to pay substantial annual fees to finance the regulator.
This is simply not fair and, in exchange for our fees, we should now get a say in how the GMC is run so we can stop this insanity. Or the Government should step in and finally admit what every doctor has known all along. We are not regulated by an ‘independent’ regulator that represents doctors, but instead by one driven by political correctness and other madnesses.
Dr Raj Persaud FRCPsych is a Harley Street Consultant Psychiatrist and publisher The Mental Vaccine for Covid-19
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