Institutional Racism in NHS, UK

[doctorsrk]

This article is from Times of India

LONDON: Nearly 60 per cent of all doctors disciplined by the General Medical Council (GMC) belong to Britain's ethnic minority communities and one in three doctors erased from the GMC register are from India, The Times of India can reveal.

The rate of penalties handed out in Britain to Indian and ethnic minority doctors contrasts with their actual numbers – Indians account for just 25,000 of the 220,000 doctors registered with the GMC, only 148,000 of whom are in active practice.

Leading medical practitioners told TOI that the disproportionate punishment of Indian and ethnic minority doctors appeared to suggest that "white doctors' misdemeanours are given less weight". They said there could be a multitude of reasons ethnic doctors are looked at more harshly, not least "institutional racism, system failure or something about overseas doctors themselves, which could include cultural differences".

The disproportionate rise in numbers of Indian and ethnic minority doctors formally investigated by the GMC has been tracked over the years by authoritative bodies such as the UK's National Audit Office, the National Health Service's National Patients Safety Agency (NPSA) and the GMC itself in a report prepared for it by Isobel Allen, a highly-respected professor emeritus of health and social policy.

Dr Umesh Prabhu, a board member of the UK-wide patients safety agency told TOI that he gets an average of four to six ethnic minority doctors applying to him for help every month because they face a formal investigation by the GMC.

"Just last week I had six Indian doctors coming to me," he said.

Prabhu pointed out that 10 years ago, the National Audit Office concluded in a disturbing report that the NHS was spending a whopping £ 46 million every year on suspended staff and 36 per cent of all suspended consultants (senior doctors) belonged to the ethnic minorities even though they make up just 16 per cent of all consultants in the country overall.

The report, he said also found that if an ethnic minority doctor won his GMC case, he is far less likely to be reinstated.

At least 46 Indians have appeared before the GMC in the past two years, Prabhu said, and "at least 30 per cent of these cases could have been dealt with locally rather than being forced to face formal disciplinary proceedings".

According to Prabhu, GMC president Graham Cattle admitted last December that Indians and ethnic minority doctors had faced disproportionate levels of disciplinary hearings in the last decade, ie two-thirds of the estimated 500 doctors who appear before the GMC.

Medical experts, including Prabhu, say the apparent reason more Indian and ethnic minority doctors are formally investigated compared to whites is "they are less well-supported by their local health trusts (which run hospitals)."

According to sources, the local health trusts "differential" view of white and ethnic minority doctors is clear from shocking cases such as that of a white local graduate who forged her consultant's signature on a certificate but was, contrary to GMC rules, dealt with informally.

In contrast, said sources, an Indian doctor recently accused of hitting a patient, was formally told it was a GMC matter even though the case could have been investigated locally.

Allegations that Britain's medical regulatory authorities use a differential approach to white and ethnic minority doctors come less than a fortnight after Indian doctors lost their seven-month-old legal challenge to the British government to force it to treat non-European Union medics in the UK "on a par and equally" with Europeans with respect to jobs and training