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The Shipman Inquiry has published its fifth report today entitled 'Safeguarding Patients: Lessons from the Past - Proposals for the Future'.

The Inquiry considered:

Whistle blowing - the opportunity available to those in positions of responsibility to report concerns or suspicions about the conduct of a medical practitioner.
Disciplinary rules for general medical practitioners and the operation of the disciplinary processes operated within the NHS and by the General Medical Council (GMC).
The system for monitoring the performance of general practitioners, with particular reference to those in single person practices, record keeping and prescribing.

A spokesperson for Alexander Harris, who represent more than 180 families of the victims of Harold Shipman at the Inquiry said:

"We welcome the recommendations made by Dame Janet Smith and hope that the government acts on them without delay. The families fought in 2000 for a Public Inquiry and they feel vindicated by Dame Janet's investigation, which was thorough and far reaching."

Dame Janet Smith's main points and recommendation's in the report were:

"Although I have said that the GMC should not be criticised for adopting a rehabilitative approach to Shipman's case, (in relation to his conviction of criminal offences of forgery and obtaining pethidine by deception in 1976) I have criticised it because, within the framework of that approach, its procedures focussed too much on the interests of the doctors in rehabilitation and not sufficiently on the protection of patients."

"I have found that the GMC has not safeguarded patients as it should have done."

"The culture of unwillingness to report colleagues (in the medical profession) has not yet completely disappeared. It must go. There can be no room for the protection of colleagues where the safety and welfare of patients is at stake."

"I have recommended that there should be a telephone helpline, with a real live person at the other end so that, in the future, people will be able to get advice about how to raise their concerns and about their legal position if they do so."

"I have recommended that a central database of information about doctors should be created so that all relevant material will be readily available for PCT's and employers to consider."

"The GMC should have the opportunity to improve its fitness to practise procedures so as to meet the legitimate expectations of patients and the public. I have recommended that the GMC should continue to be responsible for the fitness to practise procedures but that their operation should be reviewed by an independent body in about 3 to 4 years time."

"...the culture within the GMC tends to favour the interests of doctors. Although there are signs that this culture is changing, it has not proceeded far enough and I am not convinced that under the GMC's present constitution, it will ever do so."

"I have recommended that the number of members appointed against 'public interest' criteria should be increased so that members elected by the medical profession no longer have an overall majority."

I have made recommendations by which revalidation could be made into an evaluation of the doctors fitness to practise.

"I hope that all my recommendations will be considered an implemented as an interlocking framework."

 

 

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