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

Then she should have owned up earlier. Not falsify a record.

There's no excuse

she chose to take those shifts as extra locum work , faked appointments then falsified records to say that patients attended when they hadn’t. I think she got off lightly.

I do have some sympathy. It must have been badly managed if she couldn't get away on time for some reason.

All day long people (always mums) on here are stressing about how to balance work against school and nursery pick ups when they have no family help. In her position I could have called my mum or PILs at a moments notice and they would have collected my DC - not everyone is so lucky.
I'm also able to block out my work calendar when I need to leave to collect DC. I'm not a medical professional though.

However the Times stated she worked part time as a locum so i suppose she didn't have to accept that shift - but maybe needs the money.

I think it should have been dealt with by her practice. I'm sure she regrets it infinitely.

She took on extra shifts knowing she couldn't do them so the lying was premeditated and she planned to lie. It wasn't bad management - she purposely took on extra knowing she was unable.

Do you know her personally- how do you know she feels bad about it?

It's not "a professional issue that must arise frequently", that's why I and other doctors are posting on here shocked at her behaviour. The vast, vast majority of doctors don't breach probity, commit fraud and then lie about it. Because we know that it's unethical and wrong, and that we'd likely be hauled up before the GMC to face some very tricky questioning. All doctors know not to do it.

Well I'm sure every one of us would welcome a bit of extra cash. However we know it's wrong to commit fraud to get it.

I use a childminder rather than committing fraud and medical malpractice
Besides this was an extra locum shift on top of her existing responsibilities, she didn't need to do it.

What do you think would happen to anyone who did something similar in another job,ie,clocking off early and making it look as if still working? She's lucky it's only suspension.

It says a lot that it was immediately identified. I’d take a guess that she had in the past asked to leave at a certain time and been had a go at and refused so she did this out of desperation. Someone was obviously suspicious and had it in for her and immediately recognised an error.

If that's the full story, I feel sorry for her. She should never have been put in a position where her work would make her late for picking her children up. If her childcare finished at 6pm, that's when she needs to have picked them up.

DH blocks his diary out for admin during his last half hour of work on days he does the nursery run. If his employer didn't allow this, he would have to tell whoever he was in a meeting with that he was leaving when the time came... not everyone has family help and picking your children up is pretty much the most non negotiable thing I can think of. Or are the low paid childcare staff just supposed to hang around all night with upset children waiting for their parents?

Exactly, its been dealt as well with so not sure why we needed to know this.

As has been pointed out about 20 times already, these were additional locum shifts she had volunteered to do on top of her core hours. She has said she was under no professional or personal pressure to take these shifts

Noone made her work. No-one put her in that position. She chose to take on extra shifts knowing she wasn't able to do them and knowing she had to lie.

She was greedy.

Male doctors get away with worse and it gets swept under the carpet. I had a psychiatrist as a teen , only saw him twice as thought he was really weird and I didn’t like him. Turned out years later he was struck off for affairs and relationships with patients even very young ones . He’s now a freelance therapist and has had minimal publicity about what he did .

@Tulipsriver You don’t have the full story, or you’re not understanding it.

Not really - she lied, lied, and lied some more. No sympathy whatsoever.

GP suspended for faking appointments to pick up her children on time | The BMJ

I think she got off really lightly. What job do you do OP? I work in finance. I know if I falsified a meeting in my diary so I could get off work early I'd likely be sacked and thats without considering falsified medical records and the impact on patient care. Every time she did this there will have been an ill person not seen by a Dr that day because her diary was filled with blag appointments. It's such awful behaviour

There are a number of optometrists who have been in front of the GOC and suspended for the same thing.
Its not the act itself, the GOC/GMC/NMC are not interested in people making mistakes, everyone makes mistakes we are human. What they’re interested in is your character. Lying is something that is not compatible with being in a professional job which carries a certain level of responsibility towards the public. Falsifying records is a big big no no, because if your falsifying records to get out of work early what else are you falsifying? It’s a slippery slope.

It's got nothing to do with the fact that she's a doctor. Everyone has to work their contracted hours - that's why it's called a contract. It may well be that the NHS. could be a more flexible employer - I don't know because I don't work there - but until they are, she has to abide by the terms of her contract just as we all do. I was a single mum working in banking (full normal hours) and always had arrangements in place - it's not beyond the wit of man (or woman).

glad to know it’s not widespread! I phrased the post clumsily; I would expect
that there are many examples
of misconduct that arise covering a broad range of issues, leading to some sort of professional consequence. I think the press coverage including personal photos, is probably not so characteristic and driven by this person being female, and the childcare issue involved. It’s the press making an example of her, not her professional body. Outside the medical field, the daily mail loves to do articles on young females who have been caught drunk driving/speeding. All bad and dangerous things but not things that generally merit national press coverage with photos taken from social media accounts.

I have sympathy for any mother trying to juggle in this way. I don't condone what she done, I do understand why she was struggling and felt desperate enough to take such a risk.

Beautifully put

Except, being a woman, some will make all manner of excuses for her and still carry on about women not being taken seriously enough in the workplace

And why the insistence that she must have been "desperate" to take the risk?
Naturally she'll try to appear contrite now she's been caught, but some simply consider themselves entitled to take what they want regardless of the impact on anyone else, and women (and doctors, come to that) aren't exempt from this

And how was her behaviour helpful in addressing this? It wasn’t as long as she lied and deceived her employers.

She has been suspended by her profession, not the NHS and not her employers (she was a locum so this is not relevant). She undermined trust in the profession. Who do want to see accommodation made for overrunning clinics and don’t want any further erosion of professional standards. She has been suspended because she failed to uphold standards and placed people at risk. She undermined trust.

Frontline workers can’t just always leave on the dot. Regardless of whether they get paid for the time or not, and more often than not they don’t. They don’t get to walk off the job because that can cause harm and risk.

Finally she was working as a locum not a salaried member of the GP team and not for the NHS. Her working hours and commitment was hers to control.

Its not every woman's job to take on the weight of systems though. Sometimes they just try to get from day to day within them.

I'm not a doctor, but I'd safely assume that this is a very isolated case, and not run of the mill at all, which is why she is rightly being punished (not hard enough in my mind) and its getting a lot of publicity.