Your contributor’s letter on managing concerns in healthcare (The GMC’s damning silence on medical negligence cases, 15 June) paints an incomplete picture of how regulators work to protect patients and support doctors.
Where complex concerns involving doctors are raised, we work with other regulators, the employer and police to establish what action is appropriate, balancing patient safety with fairness to the clinicians involved. We will not hesitate to act if we identify patient safety issues involving individual doctors.
Our outreach team also meets doctors and employers on a regular basis to promote and support environments that enable doctors to thrive and deliver safe care, providing guidance and advice to ensure that investigations into doctors are opened only where concerns can’t be addressed locally.
Under our whistleblowing policy we provide support for doctors or trainees raising concerns. We offer a confidential helpline, staffed by specially trained advisers, which helps doctors to raise concerns or ask for advice if they do not feel able to do so locally. And we have partnered with the charity Victim Support to create the Independent Support Service, which provides emotional support and practical advice for whistleblowers by phone throughout an investigation. The service is free and confidential, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Anthony Omo
Director of fitness to practise, General Medical Council
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