Accountable to no one, upsetting everyone: the GMC must be reformed

The General Medical Council, responsible for regulating doctors in the United Kingdom, has a stark choice to make: adapt or die. The review of the damaging case of Manjula Arora, disciplined for one word she used when asking her employer for a laptop, has issued 18 recommendations for fundamental reform of the GMC. The review was requested by the GMC after a stinging backlash from the profession against the GMC’s cultural ignorance and absence of common sense. Writing last week for The BMJ (doi:10.1136/bmj.o2634),1 Iqbal Singh and Martin Forde, the review’s authors, emphasise cultural competence, compassion, and a commitment to change as key requirements if the GMC is to achieve what it professes to do: to protect patient safety and improve medical practice (www.gmc-uk.org/about).2Yet the GMC has been failing in its duty for 30 years (doi:10.1136/bmj.o2674).3 It has promised reform time and again, most notably after the Shipman inquiry report…
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