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

I read this was not the first time she added hours and blocked out appointments; apparently first time she was treated sympathetically and told not to repeat. She was caught charging out 28 hours a day for multiple days - her surgery had to pay back just shy of 100k.
Sounds like the school run is a bit of a defence strategy.

Nope. Bank work.

Only a GP ????

Who were these appointments being booked for? What notes was she taking, or just marking them down as a no-show?

They were patients who had telephone consultations earlier in the day. She added an entry to a patient's notes saying she had seen and examined them.

It’s pure and simple, fraud. The NHS is over run with fraud.

Childminders and nannies. And yes, you will pay a premium for the flexibility but let's not pretend a well paid professional doesn’t have access to that option. Plenty on this thread have described paying for exactly that service, just as I did when mine were young.

This GP had choices - she could arrange proper childcare or she could have turned down the extra shift and all the money which came with it. She chose to try and take the money for a job which finished after her childcare arrangement and without spending some of that fee on extra childcare. She falsified patient records in order to save that money.

I was contracting when I needed childcare which could cover emergency hours and ad hoc events.

The service is available, you have to be prepared to pay a premium for it. You also need back up for the service just as people do for standard childcare.

I’m gobsmacked at the number of posters who seem to equate falsifying records to save money on childcare is the equivalent of pinching paperclips from the stationery cupboard.

I’d have much more sympathy with the reception staff on minimum wage who are also often kept late at the end of a surgery but are expected to manage.

Wow when was scamming your employer so you can make the school run OK? In some respects it's irrelevant which sector she works in. To fabricate appointments and lie is pretty serious. I'm not surprised she got into trouble for this. I understand that juggling childcare and work is incredibly difficult but lying and fabricating appointments isn't the answer. It doesn't help her or any other of the millions of women (and men) dealing with this.

Yes, I read it as I’m sure you’re really aware. I have a different view to you on the severity of the punishment.

Her shift was supposed to finish at 4:45,she needed to collect her child by 6 from after school club when it finishes.
Clearly she was having to work extra hours on a regular basis due to her duty of care for every patient that gets booked into her diary by the admin team.
The culture at her practice meant it was easier to falsify patient records than have her clinic reduced so she could leave on time.
GPs are given 10minutes per appointment, including writing prescriptions and clinical notes. Any more time than that is taken out if their own time when they are staying late at the end of their shift.

She accepted that she did not have to take these hours and was not under pressure from her employers to do so.

'extra hours' are what she has to work on top of her paid hours at the end of her shift.

@GoodQueenWenceslaus is right. She accepted that she did not have to take this shift and was not under any pressure to do so. She took the shift voluntarily, knowing it would be a problem if the 16:30 appointment ran on past 16:45.

No, if you read the report itself (not media coverage) it's clear that she needed to leave the premises at 4.45 to pick up her kids at 6, which is why she didn't want to take appointments after 4.30. She obviously had a long commute, which will have inevitably made life much harder for her - we don't know why and this may have been completely unavoidable, but it wasn't the case that she was expecting to work extra hours between 4.45 and 6, it was travel time.

nope, RTFT. She agreed to work extra hours for extra pay.

It's fraud. She was being paid (out of public money) for those hours. As a GP she has the choice to work as a locum and could specify her available hours. The appointments were fraudulently used, meaning that people who needed to be seen had to wait.

Not acceptable at all.

To set it out properly again since some posters still appear to be confused...

She accepted a shift that was supposed to finish at 16:45, with the final appointment at 16:30. She needed to get away no later than 16:45 in order to pick her children up by 18:00.

She was not under any pressure to accept this shift. She chose to accept additional work but did not make any fallback provision for childcare in case her shift overran.

She became concerned that the shift might overrun, so booked an appointment for patient A at 16:30. She had a telephone consultation with patient A that morning and they did not need a face to face appointment.

She subsequently changed the 16:30 appointment to patient B, another patient with whom she had a telephone consultation that morning and who also did not need a face to face appointment.

When challenged by another doctor over the fact there was no entry in patient B's notes regarding the 16:30 appointment, rather than admitting what she had done she made a false entry stating that she had seen the patient and carried out a physical examination. The tribunal found that this showed a reckless disregard for patient safety.

No, she didn't have to work it, and she accepted it. She was paid for the time she fraudulently claimed to have been seeing patients.

She didn’t have to work it
she CHOSE to do it
knowing full well she had kids to pick up so made up false p2p appointments
then falsified their notes

There will be way more to this story, just like that homebirth story doing the rounds the other week.

No way will she have got the sack solely based on this.

She hasn't got the sack. She has been suspended from practising. The full story is in my post at 09:42. The tribunal decision is available online if you want to read it.

She falsified patient notes. That in itself is enough to warrant suspension.

That’s fair enough but the headlines make it sound like she got the sack just for leaving work early to pick up her kids without permission.