Are Doctors Really at Highest Risk for Suicide? Dana Najjar February 05, 2020: JOSEPH ONWUDE RESPONSE

 Are Doctors Really at Highest Risk for Suicide? 

Dana Najjar February 05, 2020

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/924832 

Dr. joseph onwude|  Ob/Gyn & Women's Health 


In the UK, 28 doctors committed suicide while undergoing General Medical Council Fitness to Practice disciplinary procedures between 2005 and 2013. The General Medical Council (GMC) commissioned and accepted an independent report from Sandra Horsfall, which was published in 2014. Fitness to practice procedures are very stressful, often lasting up to 5 years. It has been suggested that these disciplinary procedures are so badly handled that they may be an independent risk factor for doctor suicides. The General Medical Council, while accepting the report proposed resilience training for medical students. Parliament disagreed. 


Parliament recognized that the problem lay with the statute that controlled the GMC. In The Medical Act 1983 as amended in 2002, the GMC’s primary function was to protect the public although the GMC equated this to mean the protection of patients and not doctors though they were also members of the public. Two events in 1998 highlighted basic deficiencies in the 2002 amendment to the Medical Act which led to two major changes in the 2015 Act, in line the Human Rights Act which was now adopted by the UK and the UK Civil Procedure Rules, which highlighted the issues of fairness and justness respectively. Secondly, Parliament changed the rules for the GMC’s with regard to their primary function. If there was a doctor undergoing GMC Fitness procedures and there was a conflict in the GMC’s primary function between the protection of the public (not exclusively patients) and the welfare of the doctors, the law now states that priority was to be given to the doctor’s interests by fairness and justness. There have been at least 40 other reported doctor suicides but there is no indication that these are related to or exclusively related to GMC Fitness to Practice procedures. Hopefully, the GMC will follow the Medical Act 1983 as amended in 2015. Certainly, at a GMC Fitness to Practice hearing in 2015/2016, they were not aware of the change of their statute to give priority to the welfare of a doctor undergoing GMC FTP procedures.

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