To feel very sorry for this doctor

[runningpram]

I feel the way this lady has been treated is appalling.
Obviously this wasn’t the right thing to do but she wasn’t leaving early and there was no patient detriment. Why were her managers not supporting her better?
Why on earth could not this have been sorted out within the practise without a formal disciplinary process? As a working mum I really feel for her. Could someone medical shed light on why this would have been blown up into such an issue?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15422147/amp/GP-faked-medical-appointments-work-not-late-afternoon-school-run-suspended-practising-5-months.html

It’s not a news story really, she should be dealt with for having done it but I don’t think it’s a name and shame thing

This is the kind of negative work environment I’m talking about - experienced professionals being treated like children who can’t be trusted to manage their own time appropriately. Where I work (not UK) GPs would never stand for this sort of infantilisation - if I need to block out a slot I just tell the desk and there are no questions asked, because they know I’m a conscientious worker and don’t take the piss.

If your staff can’t be trusted not to abuse this level of freedom, you need new staff.

Even if it was, it's obvious people are deliberately ignoring it because it goes against their ridiculous narrative. People are even making up details now like "maybe her kids had SEN" when there is zero evidence of that etc

People will make up any old shit including saying they wouldn't care if their medical records were falsified just to appear "right" on this thread 🤣

That's a totally different point however.

There was no ambiguity here about whether it should be reported or not, it was clearly against the rules, as the partners response reflects.

Yes. Imagine patient B had not been feeling well a day or two later and made contact requesting an appt. At my gp surgery you have to put an online request in and a dr triages the request to see how urgently (if at all) you get to see someone. It’s quite possible that it could have affected a triage decision if it was thought the person had been examined the previous day and had been ok.

The UK government have massively over estimated the number of staff they needed to train across every profession in the nhs in the last few years (GPs are well known to be struggling to find jobs at the moment) the government are actively encouraging use of capability proceedings to go after staff, fraud is an even easier route. She was very very stupid to do what she did.

Seems like an unusually harsh punishment for what she did.

The practice could have supported her by letting her do the school run, and then let her work a bit later into the evenings. Or let her work fewer hours with reduced pay, so she has time to do the school run.

There's a million different ways that this could have been a non-issue, but unsupportive management made it an issue.

Sorry, my take away from this is Billy Big Boss earlier in the thread saying ‘only a GP’.
Sums up some private sector attitudes towards the NHS right there.
No wonder we have GPs going to Canada and Australia where perhaps they get a better work/life balance and better attitudes towards them.

She added the patient to the diary not sure that she falsified the actual patient medical record.

That's your only take away?

She admitted herself that she falsified the records of multiple patients.

Yup, this. She was defrauding the NHS. Plenty of people juggle work and children - doesn’t mean it’s not hard, of course - but there are non-fraudulent ways of dealing with problems.

I think it is shocking a GP would behave in this way, her conduct is not acceptable and this is a massive probity issue.
I don't understand why she could not have requested flexible working arrangements or reduced hours to accommodate this request.
I would imagine it would have impacted her pay and this is why she did not do so.
She has defrauded the NHS and, as tax payers, we all pay the price of this.

Or she could have not taken the extra locum hours

Unusually harsh? She falsified patient records, lied about it, then went back into the records of some and added more false information, for some people she added the wrong false notes to the patients record.

She was taking locum shifts, she herself said she didn’t have any personal or professional pressures meaning she needed to take the shifts. Being a GP she will have been well aware that an end time is variable depending on the patient who walks through the door. So knowing she would be working beyond her childcare time, she took the shifts anyway and didn’t seek alternative childcare.

But were they extra hours? I thought she was a locus and it was how she worked?

And she will still have been being paid for time she hasn't worked.

Well I think this incident shows that when you have no boundaries, people take liberties. But with the freedom she had, she abused it - and you think she was harshly treated? This likely means that you work in an environment where everyone is turning a blind eye to poor practices

It’s public funding, it all has to be transparently recorded, audible and accountable, every single penny and every single minute of time. I don’t how why you would think it wouldn’t be?

It reminds me of the paramedic struck off for letting a tyre down on the ambulance to claim a puncture so that they couldn't respond to a late job and could finish on time.

We've all thought it 11hrs and 45 minutes into a 12 hour shift, but no one would ever actually do it (but clearly someone did).

Is she wasn’t a doctor would you have the same sympathy? For example if a police officer was leaving early would you have the same sympathy? Or if it was a man doing it? I think your feelings would be different. This woman has not helped other working mums, as it feeds into the negative view that mums are unreliable .

Honestly, I think it shows the opposite - that when there is no flexibility, and no accommodation made for the realities of family life, people feel they have no other choice than to do something very silly, as this woman did.

And by ‘accommodation’, I literally mean being able to leave work at her designated finish time. I think this is something most people have missed - she wasn’t trying to finish work early, or to be paid for hours she didn’t do. She was just trying to avoid the inevitable overbooking that happens every day in GP surgeries, and that would have made her late.

But she's already paying for nursery. What childcare is in between 6-7 apart from a nanny on top of nursery? It said in the article she earnt 60k which doesn't pay for a nanny. Do we want women to work in jobs like being a GP or not?

My SIL is a GP uses help from her parents to get her kids when she runs over as her husband is a hospital doctor. But not everyone has parents to help.

I'm not condoning what she did but there is obviously a problem here in society for working mothers.

Nope.

She admitted she felt herself that she wasn’t under any pressure to take additonal work as a locum, professionally or personally.

This was pure greed.

@AppropriateAdult she could have just asked. A locum dictates their own hours, they are acting as self employed. Even an employee has rights if they need to leave, they are meant to ask a manager. It’s clear from this that she hadn’t asked, so it’s not like you can assume the employer is unreasonable or harshly treating its staff.

the alternative option is not to lie and cheat and defraud to get paid for time they don’t work.

Why is everyone ignoring the fact that didn't have to take this shift on? She chose to, for the money.

And if you work in a job where you may have to go over your allotted hours, then you need to bake some contingency into your childcare arrangements. It's not an ideal world, but anyone in these kinds of jobs knows the reality and needs to plan accordingly.