The BMA council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul warned that the GMC ruling over a GP’s request for laptop was ‘incomprehensible’, Pulse reports.
The Doctors’ Association (DAUK) and British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) have also set up a petition over the treatment of Dr Manjula Arora.
Dr Arora was suspended for a month for ‘dishonesty’ after she told an IT department she had been ‘promised’ a laptop.
Dr Nagpaul said: “This ruling will add to many doctors’ fears about the General Medical Council’s disproportionate and unfair approach to their regulatory system as it applies to the medical profession.
“A referral to the GMC can cause untold mental distress on a doctor, with some doctors having sadly taken their own lives whilst being investigated. The BMA has repeatedly raised the concern that there are disproportionate GMC referrals by employers of doctors from ethnic minorities, with doctors who have qualified overseas being referred at three times the rate of UK-trained doctors.
“This ruling reinforces the BMA’s view that there needs to be a comprehensive root and branch independent evaluation of the GMC’s fitness-to-practise decision-making procedures starting from the referral process itself – something we have called for repeatedly.”
Dr Richard Fieldhouse, NASGP chair, said: “I completely agree with Dr Nagpaul that the GMC should have systems in place to prevent cases like this ever going to a tribunal.
“Sessional GPs like Dr Arora can feel particularly isolated. That is why we are so passionate about our NASGP’s Locum Chambers model. It brings GPs together providing peer support, with the collective power to confront organisations to help them instead support the welfare of their GPs and help them to excel in the workplace.”
Discover NASGP Locum Chambers today.
