GMC LICENSE SCHEME-DOCTORS ARE HALF HEARTED

I "borrowed" the pictue from Web Wombat hope the mention makes up for it.

Times Online More than half of the 200,000 doctors in Britain have not yet signed up for a new licence that they need to continue working next year, The Times can reveal.

All doctors will, by November, be required by law to have a new licence to practise medicine as part of the biggest overhaul of medical regulation for 150 years.

The licences, to be issued by the General Medical Council (GMC), are the first practical step towards major reforms in which doctors will face mandatory annual appraisals to ensure they are fit to practise and are maintaining their clinical skills.

However, about 110,000 doctors - 55 per cent of the total - have yet to sign up to the system and the GMC is urging them to do so by the deadline of the end of September.

The wider system of revalidation, prompted by a series of medical scandals such as the Harold Shipman affair, is due to be phased in from 2011 but the announcement of the start date comes amid signs of disquiet among the medical profession, with some doctors saying that the reforms will force them to leave medicine.

A poll carried out for The Times of more than a thousand hospital consultants and GPs found last week that one in six doctors was considering a change in career due to the new regulations, while one in 12 might stop practising medicine altogether.

The GMC says it expects the vast majority of doctors who wish to continue practising to have a new electronic licence by November, but the watchdog is commencing a “reminder” campaign at the end of this month in an attempt make sure anyone currently on the medical register who wishes to be included in the system is not left out.

All those who apply will have to renew their licences every five years, subject to the results of the annual appraisals, which will involve “multi-source feedback” — including the views of colleagues and patients.

However unpopular this scheme is the GMC have doctors by the painful bits, it has been I the pipelne for quite a while now and doctors have sat back and let it happen, if they are not happy they only have themselves to blame.

This is not a pop at doctors but, if you want to change something you actually have to get off your arse and do something about it.




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