farmdoc's blog post number 220

In 2000 Dr Harold Shipman (pictured, left), a British GP, was found guilty of murdering 15 patients (though he likely killed hundreds) and sentenced to life imprisonment. (He suicided four years later.) The inevitable resultant official investigation sired an expert working group chaired by the UK’s Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson (pictured, right). In its report Medical Revalidation: Principles and Next Steps, the working group recommended that, to weed out under-performers, all 150,000 doctors in the UK should have annual performance reviews, and apply to renew their practising licences each five years. It says ‘It will help a small number of doctors to improve on those areas where they need help to meet the standards of their peers’. Maybe, Sir Liam. But managing the 150,000 annual performance reviews and 30,000 annual licence renewals will be expensive, and require a small army of personnel. If doctors do the reviews and the renewals, it’ll divert them from clinical work at a time of medical manpower shortage in Britain and elsewhere. This is yet another example of society aiming for perfection when it’s patently unattainable, at a cost which, to me anyway, far outweighs the benefits. In other words, it’s rank stupidity. Will it prevent someone like Dr Shipman passing his annual performance review and renewing his licence today, and murdering his patients tomorrow? Of course not.