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

Dishonesty is rightly taken very seriously by the GMC, but I can see how stuck she might have felt. The prosecution lawyer said she should have had back up childcare if she couldn’t get to after school club pick up on time, but realistically many people have no back up (women actually, men very often have their wives as back up). She must have been incredibly stressed and probably needed the work. It’s a shame the practice were not more supportive in the first instance. It is reasonable for employees to expect to be able to leave on time most of the time. Some sanction is right but I have every sympathy.

Yanbu. As someone who worked for nearly 30 years in the NHS what I can say is that a male Dr would almost certainly have got away with this. Some male Drs pull all sorts of stunts but manage to either go undetected, or colleagues/management look away. Dh is a Dr and also wondered why they threw the book so heavily at this GP - although he doesn’t condone what she did at all! But as he said Nurses are also held to a much higher standard, and tend to get treated much more harshly at the first sign of wrongdoing, so it’s possible that being female is a disadvantage if you have done anything wrong.

What utter garbage. She put people's lives at risk- how would you feel if your child couldn't get an emergency GP appointment because the doctor had lied and was off doing her own thing? how would you feel if she had faked your child's medical records?

She should have been struck off

She spoke to a patient by phone, then created a false entry in their notes that she'd seen the patient in person and examined them. So, any future GP would think the patient's issue had been seen in person, when it wasn't. Are you honestly saying that's not a big deal?

I suspect it's the fact she is a locum, and was being paid a high amount for a days work. If she'd been a partner, she'd have got away with it.

I work from home and have occasionally put fake appointments in calendar for school run etc, but have then made up the time in the evening, and still got all the work done.

There is a strong culture in the NHS around punctuality and presenteeism. And there is very little scope for flexibility. The reasons for this are obvious and are pretty much the same for all frontline occupations.

Frontline jobs demand people are there and ready to work when they clock on. Not coming through the door with your coat on and about to make a coffee and chat with colleagues. Conversely you can just walk out on the clock if a patient needs care because that would be professionally negligent.

Any healthcare environment where this culture doesn’t exist or is being undermined is probably unsafe.

Healthcare and other frontline jobs just aren’t suited to people who want flexibility. They aren’t even suited to people who need adjustment or support. They have always been hard and demanding jobs. Part of the reason they should be well paid and held in high status.

I don’t feel especially sorry for her. Honesty is important in a responsible position like this, and there was a pattern of repeated lying when this issue was identified. To the staff at the GP practice and to the GMC initially. That was a serious misjudgement.

Balancing work with childcare responsibilities is a pain, we all know that, we’ve likely all had issues with it. But it’s not ok to behave like this, which the doctor now acknowledges with the change of plea at the GMC hearing. I think the resulting sanction is fairly light, a short suspension, probably because the GMC think she is capable of learning from this and improving her practice.

Exactly - someone with a breast lump or something similar could have ended up not being referred on due to this. People could have died.

Yes this was my thought, that and was she required to take on an extra shift as a locum in her own surgery due to staff sickness. Did she feel under pressure to do the shift. Plus people seem to be missing the point that she did have a telephone consultation with the patients.

I'm not condoning her actions, as I agree that something essential could have been missed. I don't agree with telephone consultations in general as I don't see how they can diagnose a patient they haven't seen. But we don't know if this was a routine medication check or extension of a fit note for something that was not essential in person in her professional opinion. Therefore not as life and death as people are suggesting.

We also don't know if she has a partner or family to support. It says she's on 60k per year. As a single parent she would already be paying for after school club, which would be 100s per month. To take on a nanny that would be very expensive. I couldn't afford that on my own and I earn 51k.

Having said all that what she did was morally and ethically wrong, so I agree with her suspension, but I don't agree with her being splashed all over the newspapers and the hate she's receiving.

“Doing her own thing” - she was picking her own kids up not going for a manicure.

If I couldn’t get a GP appointment for my child (often the case) I wouldn’t blame an individual GP for having the nerve to have a life outside of work.

GP salaries are often not great. Partners might earn well but salaried/locum GPs would not normally earn enough for a nanny.

She was shattered, worried and probably couldn't think straight
Boo oh boo! Doesn't sound medicine is the right career for her if her level of resilience is that low.

these were extra hours she volunteered to do as a locum rather than the core hours of her job. She didn't have to do them, she admitted she was under no pressure to do them. She then lied and falsified medical records to ensure she still got paid while not working the hours she said she was. The picking up children thing is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what she was doing, she was not at work doing the hours she was being paid for.

id have more sympathy if this was an issue with core hours but it wasn't. It was locum shifts she chose to do.

So you'd be fine with having your medical records falsified then? or those of your child?

She chose to take on that extra shift, she wasn't forced. Its fraud and she has put lives at risk.

Suppose she had put Mrs A down as having come in with pain in the chest - fictitiously

suppose Mrs A then went on holiday and had a heart attack? Her insurers would have refused to pay out on the basis of a (completely fictitious) pre-existing condition

how would you go about disproving it?

And let's not forget - the chance that it had never happened before are probably slim. Most people don't get caught the first time they step out of line

No. But rather than just laying the blame at her door we have to examine the toxicity and mismanagement that led her to doing this. This isn’t just a bad lazy GP - it’s someone who clearly felt they had no choice and must have worked for a very unsupportive workplace pressuring her beyond her boundaries

I do have sympathy for women working in professions without flexibility, but you cannot just falsify medical records like that, come on. That isn't fair on patients and it isn't safe.

Clearly there does need to be a wider conversation around flexibility but she shouldn't have dealt with the situation like that. As she was working as a locum, she should have said she could take the shift but absolutely has to leave by 4.45 so can only take appointments up to say, mid-afternoon. Then it's up to the practice whether to take her on on that basis, or look elsewhere for cover.

She said herself she wasn’t under pressure (personally or professionally) to take on additional work.

Doctors can't fake medical records. It would be interesting to know the kind of medical appointments she was faking. Was it persistent coughs? Depression? Joint pain?
Who knows. But it could have real world implications for patients if their medical records were required for other reasons and fake appointments were on there.

No I wouldn’t be happy but I’d mostly wonder WTF was happening at my GP surgery that has led a woman to resort to this. Knowing how toxic these cultures can be and how uncaring they can be about employees, it would concern me that my GPs were being mistreated

Agree it was wrong and it had all sort of implications but her finishing time was 4:45 and she should have been able to get away.

She said herself she wasn’t under any pressure to do locum shifts. This was an active choice that she made, not one she was coerced into.

She was on 60k a year and was taking extra well paid shifts that she was no pressured to takeit was her choice. This excuse doesn't wash.

To be fair, that's not what she did .....