News

Doctors call for an end to "malicious stories"

A group of five women doctors, all of whom claim to have had false and damaging allegations made against them, is calling on the General Medical Council (GMC) - the doctors' regulatory body in Britain - to take action against doctors who harm colleagues' careers by spreading malicious stories.

The women include Professor Wendy Savage, a senior lecturer in obstetrics and gynaecology who was suspended in 1985 on grounds of alleged incompetence and later reinstated after a six week inquiry, and Dr Bridget O'Connell, who has just received an apology form her health authority after being suspended for 12 years from her job as consultant paediatrician. Both women were vindicated but only after suspension, which they claim damaged their reputations.

Professor Savage, who is now an elected member of the GMC, said: "Clearly, we believe that any doctor not practising correctly because of incompetence, alcohol or drug abuse, or mental illness should be prevented from doing so. But we are concerned about the way in which doctors are destroyed by comments made behind the scenes. Senior doctors' words are accepted as gospel and if they repeat gossip and unsubstantiated statements, then it does do harm."

Professor Savage said that she knew of remarks made deliberately to damage: "In my own case, I overheard someone - who didn't know me - saying that the reason I was suspended was because I was a socialist, feminist lesbian. Well I know no reason why such people are not good as doctors. But the purpose of that kind of remark is to marginalise the doctor and make them seem other than the dominant group of doctors."

The group of women, which also includes consultant haematologists Dr Helen Zeitlin and Dr Helena Daly and consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Miss Pauline Bousquet, is preparing several cases for the GMC. They point out that deprecation of another doctor's character is considered unethical in the GMC's code of conduct. They would like to hear from any doctor who has observed a colleague spreading malicious gossip.

Professor Ruth Bowden, past president of the Medical Women's Federation, said: "Careers and reputations should not be ruined, wrecked, or interrupted by rumour, gossip, or innuendo. The long delays that have occurred before a case is heard are quite intolerable from every point of view."

The shadow health minister, Dawn Primarolo, said that she supported the women: "We don't have enough consultants in the health service and particularly not enough women. Then we see this archaic practice totally failing to protect anything that could be faintly called natural justice. There is a world of difference between gossip and statements that are designed to undermine the confidence and professional status of an individual, repeated by those who are supposed to hold to high professional standards."

Dr James Appleyard, a member of the GMC, said that it would be difficult for the council to take any blanket action to prevent whispering campaigns, but that any individual cases sent to the GMC would be investigated: "The more that we can put off people from making disparaging remarks, the better. People must think before they speak, or they can do untold damage."