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Business Development: Playing The Right Card
Leor Franks
Efficient and innovative communication within the healthcare sector is a valuable resource and healthcare professionals are becoming increasingly reliant on the use of social media and messaging apps to communicate and share patient information with one another. However, messages composed and sent within seconds can have serious and lasting professional, legal and regulatory repercussions.
Case summary of Raychaudhuri v General Medical Council (Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care intervening) [2018] EWCA Civ 2027.
A newly qualified doctor has been issued with a warning by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) after he punched a nightclub bouncer while celebrating his graduation from medical school. He was arrested and subsequently accepted a police caution for assault by beating. As a result of the police caution, the matter was investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC) and Dr Jones then faced a hearing before the MPTS last week.This case serves as a stark reminder to all professionals to be mindful of the fact that behaviour in your private life can impact on your professional position.
The GMC will be stripped of its power to appeal against decisions made by the MPTS following recommendations from a government review commissioned following the proceedings of Dr Bawa-Garba.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) hears cases against doctors alleged to have seriously breached GMC standards. As stated on its website, the MPTS ‘provides a hearings service that is fully independent in its decision making and separate from the investigatory role of the GMC’. As part of the hearings process, when a doctor’s fitness to practise is found to be impaired, the GMC makes submissions on sanction which details the sanction the regulator considers to be appropriate in protecting the public and/or preserving public confidence in the profession (public interest). The GMC’s submissions aside, it is the MPTS that has the power to determine which sanction to impose against the doctor’s registration.
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